


I'll Be Your Safety

by backtohogwarts



Category: Life
Genre: Conspiracy, F/M, Family, Humor, Hurt/Comfort, Post canon, Post-One, Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-01-21
Updated: 2013-10-05
Packaged: 2017-11-26 09:44:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 16
Words: 44,713
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/649249
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/backtohogwarts/pseuds/backtohogwarts
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“If you say ‘you don’t have to understand here to be here’ I swear, I’ll shoot you.” She says. </p>
<p>Her mask of annoyance and irritation is betrayed by the slight upwards quirk of her lips. He wordlessly tugs back the sheets on the other side of the bed with a careful expression on his face. “I can’t sleep either.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Lie Down With Me

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: violence, occasional bad language, discussion of alcoholism, drug addiction. Title taken from "Kiss Me" by Ed Sheeran (which I obviously don’t own).
> 
> Disclaimer: I don’t own anything you recognise from the show. If I did, it would still be going and Dani and Charlie would be married by now, or at least making out on a regular basis.
> 
> My first fic for the Life fandom! Also posted over at ff.net.

Dani arrives at Charlie's house at a little before two am, dog tired and nursing a splitting headache and longing for a drink or a pill or a line or  _something_ \- anything to take the edge off of all this. She'd got as far as pouring herself a double measure of Hennessy before throwing the bottle and the glass into the sink with a frustrated shout, showering whiskey and shards of glass everywhere.

Fuck him.

Fuck Charlie Crews for saving her useless life.

Because now, she owes him.

And now she feels guilty about wanting a drink, because of him.

If ever there was a time when her falling off the wagon could be considered 'understandable', it would be after spending almost a week in the custody of Roman Nevikov whilst his animals crawled all over her, but now she was racked with guilt at the thought - Charlie didn't offer up his life for hers so that she could throw it away on half a bottle of whiskey and a line or three a few hours later.

She remembers the first thing he asked her on the first case they ever worked together -  _anyone ever love you that much?_ And she realises that until yesterday, no one ever had.

She shuts the door behind her, shaking her head at his unwillingness to lock doors, and walks up the stairs as quietly as she can. The last time she was in his house, she watched him get shot - that day was, incidentally, the last time she'd had a drink.

She tries to shake off that memory now as she creeps along the short hallway, pausing outside his bedroom door.

This is weird.

She's not making any effort to kid herself, or otherwise convince herself that this isn't a little strange - she's showing up in (not just at,  _in_ ) his house in the middle of the night. She doesn't even know why she's here - if it's comfort she's seeking, shouldn't she have gone to her sometimes-boyfriend's place?

She thinks about leaving, heading to Tidwell's like she probably should have in the first place, but realises this is the only place she wants to be. She just wants him. It's with that thought that she twists the doorknob and steps hesitantly into his master suite, ignoring the voice in her head telling her to do the opposite. Her eyes flick around the large room; the arch that leads to what she assumes must be the master closet, the half open door that she can see leads to the ensuite bathroom, and in front of her against the wall by the windows, the huge California King Bed. There's no curtains on the windows so light just spills through the glass and sends strange shadows cascading over the floor and the walls and his bed. When she finally looks at his bed, and him, she realises he's at least partially awake. And watching her.

She swallows forcibly, but stays where she is.

"You okay?" He asks after a minute, and it's such a normal, ordinary question that she almost laughs, but finds she isn't sure she remembers how.

"I've been better." She replies with a shrug and a grimace.

"I've been worse." He counters with a half smile, "I'm just glad you're…" he hesitates, "…here."

She takes a deep breath and sighs, not breaking eye contact.

"You are here, right, Reese?"

"I don't know why." She says, nodding all the same.

He opens his mouth to reply, but she knows what he's going to say before he says it.

"If you say 'you don't have to understand here to be here' I swear, I'll shoot you." She says, shaking her head. Her mask of annoyance and irritation is betrayed by the slight upwards quirk of her lips.

He wordlessly tugs back the sheets on the other side of the bed with a careful expression on his face. "I can't sleep either."

She sighs gratefully, relieved he didn't make her ask if she could stay, or offer her the couch or a guest room. She kicks off her shoes and unselfconsciously shrugs out of her jacket and jeans before climbing into bed beside him in her t shirt and underwear, nestling herself amongst the cool, soft sheets. She can't even imagine what thread count they must be, they feel like heaven on her skin.

"I knew you'd find me." she says into the darkness, half hoping he's already asleep.

"I'll always find you." He replies sleepily and she doesn't bother trying to resist the small smile that appears on her face at his words.

She's almost completely asleep when she feels his hand close over hers. It doesn't occur to her to do anything other than turn her hand over and link their fingers together as she lets sleep overtake her mercifully (and finally) quiet mind.

* * *

When Charlie Crews wakes up the day after taking Reese's place and killing Roman Nevikov, he is surprised by two things. One is that he is, in fact, alive. He killed Roman Nevikov, and then  _wasn't_  killed by the henchman surrounding the two of them.  _That's a positive development_ , he thinks with a yawn and a wiggle of his toes as he wakes up.

The second thing that surprises him is when he registers the presence of someone else in his room - or more accurately, in his bed. He opens his eyes and finds Dani Reese curled up against his chest, her dark hair cascading over his arm, her hand resting interestingly low on his waist and their legs tangled together.  _That's a_ _ **really**_ _positive development,_  his brain supplies helpfully.

For a second he remains confused about her presence there, before the night before comes back to him in a rush.

He's never had the opportunity to just watch her before, just observe her whilst she's resting and peaceful and absolutely stunning. He's not blind - he knows his partner is gorgeous, how could he not? But as they lie together he can't help but wonder if he wouldn't mind waking up this way every morning for the rest of his life.

She snuffles in her sleep, like she's on the verge of waking up, and nuzzles into his chest, and he's pleasantly surprised by that reaction - he was expecting her to either be gone or to freak out the moment they woke up. Although in all fairness, he's not sure she's actually awake.

"Morning." He says with a smile when her eyes flutter open.

"Morning." She replies, resting her chin on his chest and looking up at him with a nervous expression on her face and something akin to embarrassment in her eyes.

"You wanna talk about it?" He asks tentatively, waiting for her to get up, throw on her clothes and run from him like she would have run from Roman if she could.

"Do I ever?" She replies easily, no anger or malice in her voice. The worry is fading from her eyes.

"When you do-" He starts but she cuts him off.

"When I do, I know where you are." She reassures him. Her eyes flick to his watch, which he knows is lying on his bedside cabinet. She raises her eyebrows in surprise.

"It's almost noon." She observes, "No wonder I'm starving."

"I hope you like fruit," He teases sitting up and swinging his legs out of bed, "Ted's gone to Spain and he's the one who usually does the grocery shopping so…" He leans forward to grab his watch and hears her sharp intake of breath. He twists to see what's wrong and finds her staring not at some unknown or unidentified monster, but instead at him. She's looking at his torso, and he realises too late that she's seeing what he fights valiantly to keep hidden. His body is littered with scars and marks, most from his time inside, some from after. He is immediately embarrassed, and feels some kind of fear - not a kind of fear he's accustomed to experiencing. Others have seen him, but none have really  _looked_. Badge Bunnies and Playmates to waste away the hours with, but never someone he cared about this way. Never someone permanent. (The Zen part of his brain reminds him that nothing is permanent, but he ignores it.)

He wants to ask her-  _Are you permanent, Dani? Are_ _ **we**_? But he's not even sure there is a 'we' yet, so he bites his tongue.

He turns away and moves to stand up, to head for his closet to grab a shirt, but her small hands on his shoulders stop him in his tracks. He tenses up as he hears the rustle of the sheets that indicate she's moving closer to him. She sits down right behind him, her knees on either side of his hips and her chest pressed against his back. He feels her soft hair brush against the outside of his arm and her hands slide from his shoulders to his biceps as she tips her head and presses a kiss against the centre of the spiders web tattoo on his shoulder. Twelve lines out, for twelve years in. Twelve lines gained, for twelve years lost. The only other tattoo she can see from her current position is the clumsily drawn face of a pig on his left shoulder blade, the word ' _Jura_ ' scrawled underneath. From her limited knowledge of Spanish she knows the word is a slang term for 'cop'. It doesn't look like one he put there himself, or had someone else do. It looks like the kind of thing he would end up with if he was held down and  _branded_  with it. A pig for a cop. They literally put a target on his back. She shakes her head against the fury that rises in her. He's not there now - he's here, and  _safe,_  with her.

"You don't have to hide from me, Charlie." She says quietly, and he doesn't understand how he can simultaneously feel so afraid, so bone-deep terrified, whilst also feeling so safe, so cared for, so  _loved -_ which he knows doesn't make sense because they aren't even together. "Please don't hide from me."

"I'm not going to ask you about any of these," Her voice is so soft it's almost a whisper, and he finds himself inexplicably clinging to her voice, needing her to keep talking as if to preserve his sanity, "but when you're ready -  _if_  you're ever ready - you know where I am." She repeats his own offer back to her, gently trailing the fingers of her right hand under his arm, over his ribs and across to the left side of his chest. Everywhere she trails her fingertips she feels the slightly raised skin of a mixture of scars and tattoos. She thought he was kidding - but he really does have quite a few of them.

"And where is that?" He asks her, his voice sounding strange to his own ears.

She hooks her chin over his shoulder and tilts her head just enough that she can see his face, and he turns his head a little to see her better. They're so close all he'd need to do is tilt up his chin and he'd be kissing her.

"Wherever you are." She replies, a half smile on her face, and a softness in her eyes he's not accustomed to seeing there. He finds he could quite comfortably lose himself in their depths, and never feel the need to find his way out.

His right hand reaches up and closes over hers, his peaceful smile matching her own. She does kiss him, but not on the lips. She tilts her head to the side and kisses him on the cheek. Her lips are soft and warm and he's surprised to find his first thought isn't to turn in her arms and kiss her and press her into the mattress - not that they wouldn't both thoroughly enjoy that, he's sure - but rather to lay himself emotionally bare, tell her everything, give her all of himself. He doesn't, but it's a shock to the system to feel like he could.


	2. I'm Falling For Your Eyes...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He and Dani might well go on dates, but they'll never just be 'dating' so to speak - they're long past that stage by now. He has no idea how she feels about marriage and children, but based on what he knows about her, he can't imagine she'll be as keen as he is for either. He doesn't even know how she feels about him.
> 
> Although, that being said, he's probably lying about that last part. He knows she loves him, he's just not sure if she loves him in the way he's found he loves her. That way, in his case, being irreversibly and whole heartedly head-over-heels.
> 
> "There's something I have to do." She says out of the blue, "Mind if I borrow your car?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm aware my Tidwell voice isn't all that nice, but he strikes me as the type that would have a bit of a skeevy inner monologue - especially if someone had just done something he disagreed with.

_He stares at the sky for a minute after Reese and Bodner pull up on the sandy road, and lets it sink in through every pore in his body.  He loves her.  He’s in love with his fiery, take-no-prisoners partner.  He’s been attempting to ignore it for a while, and it wasn’t until she went to work with the FBI a few weeks ago that it started to become more deeply apparent to him._

_The moment he knew things were changing for real between them was when he realised he thought more about his partner, what she was up to when they weren’t together, what she was thinking when they were, than he did about his ex-wife.  That wasn’t a fun evening, realising he’d moved on from her.  He’d been so desperate when he got out, so determined that they would get back together that he hadn’t considered the idea that he might move on.  That he might even love again._

_As it sinks into every part of him (I love you, I love you, I love you) he realises he can’t remember what it feels like to love anyone else.  The way he felt about Jennifer feels like an echo in comparison, the words of his Zen tape of choice for today rolling through his head as he looks back down.  When his eyes find hers, she’s already watching him, wearing an expression that looks just about how he feels right about now._

_As soon as he starts to walk towards her she unbuckles her seatbelt, opens the car door and throws herself out of the car.  They walk until they meet each other half way.  This time when he reaches for her, pulls her into his arms, instead of standing there rigid and almost afraid, or pushing him away, she wraps her arms around him too, and pulls him closer._

_Her arms wrap around his neck and his encircle her waist and they just stand there, as if frozen, holding each other like they thought they’d never have the chance.  He’s sort of marvelling over how they’ve come full circle - the first time he hugged her it was their first day and case working together, she had been irritated and embarrassed and he’d not tried it again, now they’ve reached for each other and wanted to be exactly where they are.  He’s pretty sure that’s really kind of Zen._

_“I don’t know whether to kiss you or kill you.” She tells him and he can’t help the grin that spreads across his face._

_“Do I get a vote?” He asks as they both step back from the hug (though they don’t go back to what you’d call a platonic distance).  He can’t help the laugh that bubbles out of him when she smacks him across the chest._

_“I’m not kidding!  You got into that SUV with no plan and no way to escape!” She says furiously, and the grin that still hasn’t left his face is not helping._

_“And yet here I am.” He says, gesturing to himself and raising his eyebrows._

_He’s not in the least bit surprised when gapes at him and raises her hand to hit him again.  This time he catches her hand in his (and the fucker is **still** grinning! She thinks exasperatedly), “I’m sorry I scared you,” he tells her, “I’m not sorry for what I did, but I **am** sorry that I scared you.”_

* * *

 

“I killed Roman.” He says out of the blue a few days later when the two of them are sprawled on his couch wrapped in a blanket of comfortable silence.

“Why?” She asks, and he raises his eyebrows at her.  A wordless; _seriously?_

She rolls her eyes at him, “No, I meant- what he do that pissed you off that much?  I’ve seen people say all sorts of crap to try and provoke you, but you let _him_ get to you?”  It’s not accusatory exactly, just curious with an edge to it - the kind of edge that he hears when she’s asking something she’s not sure she wants the answer to.

A muscle in his jaw twitches, and he looks away from her, tipping his head backwards to rest on the top of the couch cushions.

“He punched me,” He answers after a while, “I just kept thinking about that video, when he hit you and you couldn’t even defend yourself because that piece of shit coward tied you up.  He hurt so many people, and he hurt _you_ , and I couldn’t let him get away with it.” He replies honestly, and she sucks in a deep breath, holds it for a second, and then lets it out. 

He doesn’t call her on it, or point it out to her, but it’s just another one of his mannerisms that she’s absorbed over their two years partnership.  It’s part of a meditation practise - take a deep breath in to calm and centre yourself, hold the breath to quiet your mind and then breathe out and release all the festering negativity within you.

She slowly reaches out between them and covers his hand with hers.

“I knew you’d find me.” She says honestly, “I told him you would.”

He stares at their clasped hands, laying so innocently on the couch cushion between them and in that moment he can see a whole life play out in front of him.

He can imagine dating her and then her moving in and then them getting engaged and then married and then filling this empty mansion of his with some children - who with them will bring noise and clutter and chaos and he can imagine watching their kids grow up and one day the two of them will retire from the force and maybe they’ll travel or maybe they’ll stay right here, content to need nothing but each other and the health and happiness of their family for the rest of their lives.

He blinks and it’s gone, and he - as he is known to do - analyses it in his head.

He and Dani might well go on dates, but they’ll never just be ‘dating’ so to speak - they’re long past that stage by now.  He has no idea how she feels about marriage and children, but based on what he knows about her, he can’t imagine she’ll be as keen as he is for either.  He doesn’t even know how she feels about him.

Although, that being said, he’s probably lying about that last part.  He knows she loves him, he’s just not sure if she loves him in the way he’s found he loves her.  That way, in his case, being irreversibly and whole heartedly head-over-heels.

“There’s something I have to do.” She says out of the blue, “Mind if I borrow your car?”

He raises his eyebrows at her, silently asking-without-actually-asking, and she rolls her eyes back at him.

“No, you can’t come.  I have to do this by myself.” She asserts, and a menagerie of options float through his head, but he discards them all.  She’ll tell him when she wants to.  Besides, she’s spent the last few days held against her will by a murderous psychopath.  Forcing her to do anything is pretty high on the list of stuff-that’s-a-really-really-really-fucking-dumb-idea.

“Okay,” he says, reminding himself that she’s a grown woman and a detective to boot - she doesn’t need him to hold her hand wherever she goes, “Are you- are you coming back?” He asks against his better judgement.

“Never.” She says solemnly, “I’m going to walk out the door, take your car and ignore you for the rest of my life.”

“Point taken,” He replies, rolling his eyes at her, “If I promise to take you somewhere delicious for dinner later, do you promise to come back?”

She can’t help but grin as she stands up.  “Better be somewhere good.” She acquiesces, leaning down to kiss him on the cheek - it’s so casual in its intimacy that it steals his breath for a second - and then she turns and heads for the door, grabbing the keys to his new car off the table in the foyer before heading out, trying not to freak out over the fact that she’d felt completely comfortable crossing the no-touching-ever line she’d set months ago.

* * *

 

When Reese shows up at Tidwell’s house that afternoon, he’s not entirely sure what he was expecting.  It’s a couple of days after Crews found her (offered up his life in exchange for hers according to Agent Bodner) and she’s driving his car.  Well, Tidwell is assuming it’s _his_ car because last time he checked, Reese didn’t drive (and definitely couldn’t afford to buy) a Ferrari.

In fact, as far as he can recall, Crews doesn’t own a Ferrari either, but then again last time he checked, Crews’ car had been ploughed through Bodner’s garage door.

_Smarmy bastard only went and bought himself another fucking fancy ride_ , he thinks, shaking his head as he watches her climb out of the low-riding mat black speed machine from his living room window.

He thinks about opening the door for her, but realises she’d then know he was watching her, and instead waits for her to ring the doorbell.

He opens up to let her in, but she doesn’t move to walk inside.

He opens the door wider, and steps aside - if she’s here to end things, she may as well at least do him the courtesy of talking about it.  She nods resignedly and steps over the threshold into his house.

“Can I get you anything to drink?” He asks, and she shakes her head.  She’s biting her bottom lip (fucking tease) and clutching her- _his_ car keys like a lifeline.

His heart sinks through his shoes and he recognises that this isn’t going to be as fun as her usual visits to his place.

“Charlie told me what you did.” She starts, and he wasn’t expecting that to be her opening line, but anything that isn’t _we need to talk,_ or _I’m sorry, Kevin,_  or the old classic _it’s not you it’s me_ , is good in his book.  “How you let him break regs all over the book just to help him get me back.”

“I just wanted to get you back safe.” He says, shoving his hands deep in his pockets to prevent himself for reaching out for her like he wants to.  He doesn’t say _like anyone could stop him from breaking the rules_ like he wants to, either.

“I’m taking some time off.” Again, not what he’d expect her to say, but better than _it’s over_ , so he’ll take it.

“From the job or from me?” His mouth moves without his permission, and the words tumble out before he can stop them.

She smiles at him, sort of sadly.  “I’ll come back to LAPD when I’m ready.”  She makes the qualification, and he hears what she isn’t saying louder than the things she is.

She won’t be coming back to him, not ever.

“You and Crews, right.” He deduces for himself, and she shrugs.

“I don’t know what Charlie and I are doing yet but- we’re something.” She replies thoughtfully.  It sounds freakishly close to the Zen bullshit that Crews is always spouting, and it only serves to remind him how much better they seem to know each other than he has ever known, or _will_ ever know, Dani- Detective Reese.

She’s back to Detective Reese and he’s back to Captain Tidwell.  No more Dani and Kevin.  _Did she ever call you Kevin_?  He asks himself, and finds he can’t actually remember a time she called him by his first name.

Then he shrugs his shoulders, “It doesn’t matter, you’re both suspended anyway.”

Her eyes flash and he realises that probably wasn’t the best delivery of that information.

“You because you’ll have to have a full phys-psych eval before you’re cleared for duty, and Crews because he broke near enough every rule in the damn handbook _and_ he killed an FBI Agent.”

He senses that he’s not really handling this one well when she takes a step back.

“An FBI Agent who was in Roman’s pocket!” She fires back, then shakes her head.  She takes a deep, slow breath, before holding it for a second then letting it go - it’s something he’s seen Crews do a few times and he wants to punch himself for not noticing before how many of his mannerisms she’s taken on - if he watched Crews he’s sure he’d notice him taking up Da-Reese’s habits, too.

“Good to know - if I hadn’t shown up here today, how exactly were you planning on letting us know that?  Would you have called us or just let the rat squad sniff around and make up their own minds about what happened?” She asks, and he sighs when he sees not an ounce of familiarity or affection for him in her gaze.

“Well, you know now.” He replies emotionlessly.

She shakes her head and turns away from him, heading for the door.

“Bye, Tidwell.”

“We were good together, Dani.  We were, weren’t we?” He says helplessly before he can stop himself, and she turns to face him, one hand on the doorknob.

“It doesn’t matter what we were.” She says thoughtfully, and he knows she’s going to hit him with more of Crews’ Zen crap before she even starts speaking again, “The past doesn’t exist.  Neither does the future.  Just now.  And he’s my now.”

He has absolutely no clue how to respond to that beyond the angry, petulant responses that spring to the tip of his tongue.

This time he shakes his head and turns away from her, thinking she doesn’t hear him mutter, “fucking crazies.  They’re welcome to each other.” Under his breath as the door closes behind her.

* * *

 

Charlie sits down in the reclinable chair in the shop in a bad part of town and shrugs out of his hoodie.

“What are we doing today?” Rico, a large, bald-headed man who did most of Charlie’s ink on the inside (at least, the stuff he actually wanted rather than the couple of things they’d put on him without his consent) asks as he sits down on the stool beside the chair.

Charlie holds out his left forearm to the man, who whistles lowly.  “Those mean what I think they do?” He asks, looking down at the simplistic artwork (if you can call it that) and Charlie just shrugs.

“They mean the same thing they’ve always meant on the inside.” Charlie replies a little sharply, “And since when did you start asking questions, anyway?”

The man shrugs, raising his hands in surrender, “I just do the ink, man.  What colour is this one going to be?”

“Two of them, and both red.”

“Shit, Crews.  You gonna end up back inside if you aint careful.” The guy shakes his head, setting up the tattoo gun before positioning Charlie’s arm where he can get the easiest access.  He doesn’t need stencils for these.  They’re not meant to be pretty.

“Good job I’m careful then, huh.” Charlie’s tone reminds the tattoo artist more of the guy he met inside - Charlie Crews The Con - than the guy he’s tattooed once or twice since they both got out - Charlie Crews The Cop.  He contemplates asking Charlie which exactly he is, but decides against it.  He’s got expensive equipment in here, the last thing he needs is a fight.  Charlie’s not exactly known for his even temper, Zen notwithstanding.  “Some guys went after my girl.”

It’s the kind of thing that if Dani heard him say, she’d scowl and give him the silent treatment for an afternoon, but it’s the kind of talk that this guy will understand.

They don’t talk for the few minutes it takes to put the two new additions on to Charlie’s skin - most guys don’t talk when they’re getting inked in prison, you get caught then you’re looking at a month in solitary, minimum.  Most guys carry the habit with them even after they leave - both getting inked _and_ staying quiet while it happens.

It’s not the first tattoo he’s added since he got out, but it is the one he’d hoped he wouldn’t have to get again.  It’s not like he can hide them from Dani - if they’re headed where they seem to be going then she’s bound to see them at some point - and she’s worked in law enforcement long enough to know what they mean.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Props to anyone who can guess what Charlie's tattoos are - they're pretty common on prisoners sentenced to life without parole, or so the internet told me.


	3. ...But They Don't Know Me Yet

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Later that evening they're sitting having dinner in a restaurant as promised (not the kind of place you wear jeans to, but also not the kind of place where they expect the men to wear tuxedos and the women to wear evening dresses), and Dani knows Charlie wants to ask where she went because he's been flicking between telling her Zen stories and explaining the origins and histories or fruits she didn't even know existed since she returned to his place and picked him up in his own car.
> 
> "You're dying to ask, aren't you?" She teases with a smirk on her face, and he pauses with his forkful of mashed potatoes half way to his mouth.
> 
> "I- what? No. It's your business, you'll tell me when you want to. Or not at all. That's okay too. Whatever you want. I don't mind." He realises he's rambling when she raises her eyebrows at him, so he shuts himself up with the mouthful of food.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Charlie's tattoos will be explained in the next chapter or the one after (I've drawn up a sort of diagram of my head canon for what they look like to help me write the description of them from Dani's perspective and I'm thinking of posting if anyone's interested), thanks for your reply silversurf4, you hit the nail on the head! 
> 
> Plus, more skeevy Tidwell voice to look forward to in this chapter.

Later that evening they're sitting having dinner in a restaurant as promised (not the kind of place you wear jeans to, but also not the kind of place where they expect the men to wear tuxedos and the women to wear evening dresses), and Dani knows Charlie wants to ask where she went because he's been flicking between telling her Zen stories and explaining the origins and histories or fruits she didn't even know existed since she returned to his place and picked him up in his own car.

"You're dying to ask, aren't you?" She teases with a smirk on her face, and he pauses with his forkful of mashed potatoes half way to his mouth.

"I- what? No. It's your business, you'll tell me when you want to. Or not at all. That's okay too. Whatever you want. I don't mind." He realises he's rambling when she raises her eyebrows at him, so he shuts himself up with the mouthful of food.

She pauses to think about her next words and takes a sip of her drink (diet coke - the only kind of coke she does these days). She figures honesty is the best policy. "We're both suspended from duty."

He swallows his mouthful then shrugs. "I figured." Then he looks up at her, confused, "I get why I'm suspended, I broke pretty much every reg they have, but why are  _you_  suspended? You were the victim." He sounds so indignant on her behalf it makes her want to hug him. Instead she scowls.

"I'm not a victim, Crews." She asserts.

"Back to Crews… if I promise never to call you a victim again will you go back to Charlie?" He asks, a teasing glint in his eye.

"Deal." She acquiesces, "and I'm suspended because Tidwell won't let me back on the job 'til I've had a full phys/psych eval. It doesn't matter wither way, I decided to take some time off." She doesn't miss the slight narrowing of his eyes at the mention of her ex. Can he really be called her ex when she's not sure they were ever  _together-_ together in the first place?

She watches him for a second before deciding to put him out of his misery, so to speak.

"I went there to end whatever it was we were and he took it… well, he wasn't impressed." She informs him, choosing to leave out the last part of their goodbye. Charlie's already gotten himself suspended for her, she doesn't want him losing his job for punching their captain, too.

He doesn't catch his grin quite in time, but schools it quickly. "I'm uh… I'm sorry to hear that."

She laughs, short and sharp, her eyes sparkling with mirth. "Bullshit."

He opens his mouth to reply, but nothing comes out. He looks around like he's looking for inspiration, but that just makes her laugh more.

"Wow, I've reduced you to speechlessness." She grins.

"No, I was just-" He starts to protest, but she cuts him off.

"No, no. Don't ruin it." She says, closing her eyes and smiling, "I'm savouring the moment."

"The moment?" He asks her with a bemused expression on his face.

"I made you speechless." She says fondly, "I actually made you, the man who literally  _never_  stops talking - even in his  _sleep_  - go silent."

He shuts his mouth with a snap, and blinks at her, still wearing the stupid knowing smile.

"What?" She asks, and he just shakes his head.

"Charlie…"

He ignores her,  _still_  wearing the smile and cuts a slice of steak and eats it, his eyes never leaving hers.

"So, what, you're not gonna talk to me now?" She asks, exasperatedly, "is that what you're doing - giving me the silent treatment?"

He still doesn't say a word, just blinks and smiles.

"Charlie, I swear…" She starts, then stops herself, "this is some kind of bullshit Zen lesson, isn't it?"

"Oh so now you  _want_  me to talk?" He asks, raising his eyebrows at her.

"Just say it, whatever it is." She says exasperatedly.

"Whenever we become aware of silence, space and stillness we connect with something deeper within us and all around us. Without that awareness there would be no perception, no thoughts, no world." He informs her, reciting from one of his favourite Zen passages. He had a lot of time to contemplate silence and stillness whilst in twenty-three-hour-a-day solitary confinement.

She gapes at him and shakes her head.

"Fuck you, Charlie." He knows she only half means it, her eyes are smiling.

"All in good time, honey." He teases, raising his glass to her.

"You should be so lucky." She mutters, clinking her glass with his and taking a long drink. She's pleasantly surprised when she finds she isn't wishing it was a crisp glass of wine, an ice cold beer or even (her personal weakness) a double-straight vodka.

* * *

They've just got back into Charlie's car (this time he's driving) when Dani's cell phone rings. Her previously calm expression immediately morphs back into one of contempt and frustration, and his gut tightens because he knows it must be Tidwell.

He doesn't like that he reacts like that, by all accounts he has no right to. Even if he and Dani are something, or are on the verge of becoming some kind of something, the three of them are going to see each other every day. Tidwell is their boss, and Tidwell and Dani used to date. He needs to get used to that pretty quickly otherwise he knows she won't be happy. He'd managed to get used to the idea before, when they were still dating, but only because he seemed to be good for her. He was a good guy who didn't seem the type to hurt her, and that rationale made sense to him while he was still convincing himself he didn't have feelings for his younger partner.

"No, I'll be there." Dani's voice drags him back from his musings and he watches her with no small amount of curiosity. "That's okay, I'll tell him … I'm pretty sure that's none of your business … Like I said, we'll be there." Each time she pauses to let Tidwell speak he can see the tension rushing through her shoulders and her scowl deepening. After a terse goodbye, she hangs up the phone and drops it into her lap.

"So, who was that?" he asks brightly, starting the car and reversing out of the space.

"Funny," she replies, rolling her eyes at him, "Tidwell says IAD wants to talk to us both, separately, tomorrow morning."

He raises his eyebrows and nods slowly, he knew this was coming. "Do you have a lawyer?" She asks randomly, and he realises with a jolt that he doesn't. As if reading his mind she says, "You should probably get one, I mean, you and the rat squad aren't exactly best buddies."

"That's true." He agrees, making a mental note to check the time difference between LA and Spain and call Ted to ask what he did with the list of potential new lawyers he had made when Constance became an ADA.

He definitely isn't going to entrust the job to a lawyer supplied by the department.

He'd ask Seever but he's pretty sure they won't let her near this - especially since Rayborn seems to be trying to get her on his side.

"We should carpool." He says randomly, and Dani raises her eyebrows at him, "You know, I'll pick you up and we'll car-share. Tomorrow - for the interviews with IAD. We should do that, don't you think? It's good for the environment."

"Says the guy with the car that chugs through gasoline like nobody's business." Dani replies sarcastically, and he nods.

"Exactly, if I pick you up, that's one less car on the road which means less - y'know, bad stuff in the air." Dani throws him a look and he shrugs his shoulders at her, "I told you, I'm not good with Science." He pauses, "or Math, really. Hence, Ted."

* * *

Ted answers the phone with a mumbled "wassgoinon?" as if Charlie had woken him up. He's pretty sure he got the time difference right, it should be a little before five in the evening.

"Hey, Ted, how's Spain?" He asks brightly, popping the top off of a Corona and heading out onto the pool deck while he talks.

"S'great." Ted replies, still little more than a mumble.

"Did I wake you up? You sound weird. What time is it over there?" Charlie asks and he hears Ted ask the time, and in the background someone replies, "Ten-to-five in the morning."

"Ten-to-five in the morning?" Charlie parrots, then recognises the voice, "Are you with Olivia right now? Are you banging my nearly-almost-step-mom?"

"Nobodies 'banging' anybody it's  _ten-to-five in the morning_ , Charlie." Ted replies, sounding a little more awake and decidedly exasperated. Charlie hears a giggle in the background which he chooses to ignore, for the sake of his own sanity.

"Right- sorry. So anyway, what did you do with that list of potential new lawyers? I need it." Charlie says, swigging a mouthful of beer.

"List of- what did you  _do_? Did you get arrested again? Is this about what happened with Rayborn and Roman and Reese?" Ted asks, all in a rush and suddenly sounding completely awake and completely anxious.

"List of  _lawyers_ ," Charlie decides answering all his questions in one go is probably best, "I got Reese back, No, and yes."

"I know you got Reese back, you called me, what I meant was… you know what, never mind. The list is in the middle draw of the blue filing cabinet in my room." Ted tells him, the anxious tone of his voice fading into detached exasperation that Charlie has so often heard from his friend.

"Thanks, Ted. Say hi to Olivia for me."

There's a pause on the other end of the line, then Ted says, "But I thought you didn't… y'know-"

"I didn't like that Olivia was marrying my father. I'm sure she's a perfectly lovely lady, and now that she's not marrying my father, you can say hi to her for me."

Instead of replying, Charlie just hears Ted say, "Charlie says hello." And then Olivia's faraway voice cheerily replies, "Hello, Charlie."

He smiles in spite of himself, bids them good morning and heads for the garage.

* * *

The next morning he picks her up from her house at twenty past eight in the morning, as agreed, and, as usual, Dani doesn't really say anything at all until they stop by a coffee place to get her caffeine fix. Charlie likes this particular coffee house because there's a guy who sells obscure fruit from a table in the shade of a couple of trees on the same corner. When he returns to the car with coffee for Dani and an Ugli fruit for himself. Dani takes a mouthful of her coffee and eyes the fruit in his hands with trepidation and mild disgust.

"What the hell is that?" She asks in exasperation.

"It's an Ugli fruit," Charlie tells her, holding it out for her examination - it's a fruit that lives up to it's name, it looks like a lumpy mutant orange and it's a vaguely yellow-ish-brown colour. "It's a grapefruit-tangerine hybrid which is grown in Jamaica and it's the only fruit to have a name that starts with the letter 'u'."

"Is that so?" She replies, taking another mouthful of coffee as he stows the fruit in the pocket of his grey suit jacket. She imagines he probably bought it so he could eat it in the session with IAD today, regale them all with tales of Zen and the origins of the frankly repulsive looking fruit he just bought.

"Yup, you want some? I bought a bunch of them." He asks, as he drives and she shakes her head and downs some more of her coffee.

"Thanks but I'll pass." Then a thought catches her, "a bunch?" she parrots to him, "how many did you buy?"

"Five." He tells her nonchalantly, "are you sure? They're really juicy and delicious."

"I'm sure, Crews. Why do I get the feeling you're going to offer them to the rat squad during the interview?" She asks him, and his lips quirk up into a barely-there smile.

"Sharing is caring, Reese." He tells her, quite seriously.

"Are you trying to get yourself fired?" She protests as he pulls into the parking garage below the station.

"If you really want to find the way, don't hold on to anything." Charlie tells her in his best Zen-wise voice.

"I haven't had enough Caffeine for this." Dani complains under her breath as Charlie pulls into a parking space and laughs under his breath at his partner.

* * *

Tidwell is standing in the doorway to his office talking to one of the officers from IAD when he sees the two of them getting out of the elevator together, and immediately assumes they must have travelled here together too. He wonders if they spent last night together as well, and assumes that since she was obviously with him when he called to tell her about the meeting, she must have stayed over.

It pisses him off more than it should - although, by all accounts, she was still his girlfriend this time the day before - so she obviously didn't waste any time morning their relationship if she's already jumped into bed with someone else.

The two of them haven't yet headed over to their desks, instead they're standing by the elevators still, talking quietly with their heads close together.

"I'll go and let my colleague know they've arrived." The short man beside him says, and Tidwell nods, not really paying him a great deal of attention. He's watching Dan- _Reese_  and Crews interacting with each other, and it's almost bizarre the way both nothing and everything seems to have changed between them. They don't stand any closer together than before, but then, they never exactly stood far apart. It's not the proximity that's different, but rather the intimacy within that proximity - as they talk they stare into one another's faces as if they're having a whole separate conversation in non-verbals and subtext, in a whole other language that no one but the two of them could possibly understand.

Tidwell watches with some kind of morbid curiosity as Crews says something to his younger partner that apparently amuses her, a smile spreading across her face as she shakes her head at him. She replies, and Tidwell can see Crews' shoulders shaking with laughter from across the room.  _Jesus Christ, get a room…_  he thinks to himself, deciding now would be a good moment to break up the party.

He heads over towards them at almost the same time as the single most average looking man Tidwell has ever seen. He wears a suit that is smart and well fitted but not ostentatiously expensive or tailored, his hair is short and the same shade of brown as his eyes, his glasses are simple black rectangular frames and his briefcase is black leather. He's the kind of person you forget almost immediately after you've met him.

The man shakes Crews' hand, and then Reese's, and then Tidwell is standing beside them with no idea what to say.

"This is George Thompson, my lawyer." Crews says when the awkwardness becomes palpable.

"Tidwell." He replies shortly, nodding once to the man before returning his gaze to Reese and Crews, "They're waiting for you."

"Great," Crews replies, sounding cheerfully sarcastic, "this should be fun."


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "They asked me if we were in a, quote, 'romantic relationship'." Charlie tells her, putting air quotes around the words.
> 
> "And what did you say?" Dani asks, and neither of them have turned to look at the other yet. They're trying to pretend this conversation isn't important, like the answers to their questions don't carry the weight of the world.
> 
> "I lied." His reply is simple, and not really an answer at all. /I guess I'll have to get used to that/, she thinks to herself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some more on Charlie's tattoos, but the meanings behind most of them will be explained in a different chapter.
> 
> Charlie's Zen comment about speech and silence is a quote by Chinese Chan master I-tuan (9th century), a disciple of Nan-ch'uan (at least, that's what the internet machine told me).
> 
> This chapter doesn't contain the whole interviews, I'll be expanding on what happens in there later.

"Internal Affairs Departmental Interview 4471. Currently present is Detectives Danielle Reese and Charles Crews , Attorney for Detective Crews, George Thompson and interviewing IAD Officers, Lieutenant Michaels and Sergeant Forsythe." Michaels sets the tape recorder down on the table between them and shuffles through the papers in front of him before looking up at Dani and Charlie over the conference room table, "You've both been interviewed separately already this morning, now we just want to make sure those stories match."

"Why wouldn't they match?" Dani says sharply, disliking what Michaels is implying, "You think one of us is lying?"

Everyone in the room knows that by 'one of us' she means Charlie.

"Maybe they think we'll be able to jog each other's memories about what happened." Charlie suggests cheerfully, swivelling his chair to look at her.

"I can't see how that would work, I was tied up in a room with Roman and his cronies the entire time!" Dani protests, folding her arms across her chest.

"That's true," Charlie says to Michaels and Forsythe as if he's just remembered the fact, "She's was."

"Can we get back on topic sometime soon please, would that work for everyone?" Forsythe, a sharp faced middle aged woman with eyes that say  _I don't even love my own mother_ , suggests, looking up from the file she'd been flicking through.

"Works for me." Charlie replies with a shrug, looking over at Dani inquisitorially. Dani wonders if he was like this during his solo interview with them earlier. He was probably worse, truth be told. The thought makes her smile, so she nods too, "me too." She tells them.

She hears Charlie's lawyer sigh next to her (he'd ended up sat between them), and she bets he's wondering if he's going to have to deal with both of them being smart asses to the rat squad for the entire interview.

* * *

"Internal Affairs Departmental Interview 4469. Currently present is Detective Danielle Reese and interviewing IAD Officer, Lieutenant Michaels. First of all, how are you feeling, Detective Reese? You've been through quite an ordeal."

His hands are folded on the desk in front of him and he's got an amiable  _I'm nice_  sort of expression on his face that makes Dani feel immediately distrustful.

"I'm fine." She replies, searching his face and body language for anything that might tell her what she's doing in this room. She was, as Crews said, the so-called victim in this situation, so why aren't they asking her to write up a report? Why are they sticking her in a room with IAD like she's done something wrong?

"Good," Michaels says with a fake smile, "You had a lot of people very worried."

She narrows her eyes, "Well, next time I get kidnapped by a psychopath I'll be sure to let somebody know beforehand so nobody  _worries_." She replies, barely reigning in the sarcasm in her voice.

"The Captain of this station," he looks down and checks the file in front of him, "Captain Tidwell in particular seemed very concerned about your wellbeing. Do you have any idea why that might be?"

"Because of the paperwork he'd have to do if I'd died, I guess," Dani replies easily, "He was the one who volunteered me for the fake FBI Task Force after all."

"Fake? What makes you think it was fake?" Michaels asks, eyeing her curiously.

"The only things they asked me about while I was there were people Crews or I are or were connected to. Then when I told them I wouldn't play spy for them they put me in the back of an SUV and handed me off to Roman Nevikov."

She doesn't see even a flicker of surprise or disbelief on Michaels face, and she finds somewhere in her, she was hoping she would.  _Maybe Charlie's conspiracy theory isn't such a conspiracy after all,_ she thinks to herself.

* * *

Meanwhile, in the interview room next door, Forsythe is interviewing - rather, is  _attempting to interview_  - Charlie. She's not making much headway.

"Okay, let's try something easy." Forsythe tries, turning her eyes on Charlie, "You say you traded yourself to Roman in order to free Detective Reese." She pauses to give Charlie the opportunity to comment. When he doesn't she continues, "Why did you do that?"

"Because I am connected to all beings just as all beings are connected to myself." Charlie replies immediately, looking relaxed to the point of cocky.

Forsythe's face betrays no emotion whatsoever as she sizes Charlie up.

"Would you say your 'connection' to Detective Reese is the same as it is to anyone else?" She asks, doing that creepy x-ray eyes thing that makes him feel like she's making (mostly likely incorrect) assumptions about him.

"Reese and I are partners." He tells her shortly, finding it already feels a little strange to go back to calling her Reese after calling her Dani for the last few days.

"So you are not romantically involved with Detective Reese?"

"No." Charlie tells her honestly,  _not yet_ , his mind supplies as he pulls an Ugli fruit from his pocket and starts to peel it.

"What about Captain Tidwell?" Forsythe asks, taking off her glasses and setting them on the table in front of her; and even though he knows what she's really asking, his eyebrows shoot up and his hand pauses halfway to his mouth with a slice of fruit.

"Nope, not in a romantic relationship with him either." Forsythe shoots him a look so he shrugs at her. "He's not really my type."

His lawyer bites the inside of his cheek and looks down at his notes to keep from laughing. Mr. Crews partner really wasn't kidding earlier when she told him by the elevators that he'd be in for a treat working as the lawyer of the Detective who apparently enjoys walking the knife edge between Zen and chaos.

"Did you kill Roman Nevikov?" Forsythe asks, attempting to wrong foot him.

He opens his mouth to throw some Zen at her, but his lawyer speaks before he can.

"You don't have to answer that."

Charlie gives Forsythe a  _what can you do?_  Look and offers both Thompson and Forsythe a slice of Ugli fruit.

"Do you have anything to say about the death of the man who kidnapped your partner?" She asks, arching one eyebrow at him in a way that reminds him of the look Jennifer used to give him right before he was relegated to the couch for the night.

"Speech is blasphemy, silence is a lie. Above speech and silence, there is a way out." He informs them both. Forsythe bristles and Charlie grins.

He was right before. This  _is_  going to be fun.

* * *

"Why do you think Detective Crews offered up his life for yours?" Forsythe asks her, but watches Charlie.

"We're partners." Dani replies immediately, resolutely not looking over at Charlie.

"You don't think it was so he could get Roman alone to kill him then?" Michaels suggests, leaning a little closer towards her over the desk, an almost conspiratorial expression on his face, as if they're cohorts, in this together.

"That's speculation at best, slander at worst." Thompson says at the same time as Dani says, "But he wasn't alone."

Both of the IAD officers are looking at her now, "Weren't they?"

"Is that a serious question? I already told you there was at least four other people in that SUV with Roman, all of them loyal to him. How exactly are you suggesting that Crews managed to kill Roman without getting torn apart by the AK-47-toting gangster wannabes?"

"How do you think he did it?" Forsythe asks, staring at her piercingly.

"Umm, guys? Sitting right here." Charlie says, raising his hand as if he were a kid in class.

"Sorry," Dani says finding she suddenly has a very short attention span for what these two clowns from the brass have to say to them, "You got any more of that creepy fruit?" She asks, swivelling her chair to turn to face her older partner.

" _Ugli_  fruit," he corrects her, reaching into his pocket to pull one out, "Sure, you want one?"

"I just want to see if it tastes as bad as it looks." She says, as he dutifully peels the fruit and passes her a slice.

He can't believe she's actually resorting to eating fruit to ignore the rat squad. He can't help but wonder what Michaels said to her in their interview earlier that pissed her off this much.

She tips her head back a little and pulls the fruit into her mouth with her tongue,  _no no bad thoughts Charlie not while we're at work she'll stab you with a spoon_ , he thinks to himself as she chews and swallows it.

"That's not bad." She tells him in surprise.

"Juicy and delicious, right?" He says, grinning at her.

She nods, "Have you tried that?" She asks Thompson, "You should probably get used to the fruit thing if you're going to be his lawyer."

"I'm sorry, are we boring you, Detectives?" Forsythe snaps at them from across the table.

"Yes." They say in unison. Dani scowls because this whole thing is just a serious waste of her time. Charlie grins because, hey, look at that, they agree on something.

"Unless you have anything further of relevance to ask Detective Crews or Detective Reese, I'm going to suggest we draw this interview to a close and ask that you direct all further inquiries to my office." Thompson says.

When neither Michaels nor Forsythe seem able to raise a valid objection to Thompson's statement, the lawyer stands up. Charlie and Dani follow suit, and promptly follow him out of the room.

"You got any more of that Ugli fruit?" Dani asks as they head for the elevator.

Charlie shakes his head and flashes her a peaceful smile, "I thought our new friends might like it."

Dani doesn't bother to stifle the laugh that bubbles out of her as they step into the elevator. She can feel Charlie's hand settle almost possessively, low on her back, and she catches Tidwell's sour-grapes glare as the doors slide shut.

* * *

They're standing out on the patio deck of his (extravagant, unsettlingly enormous for a cop, just plain  _cool_ ) house, leaning against the railing and enjoying the easy silence, the remnants of a Chinese takeout dinner on the small table between the loungers on the pool deck behind them. It's starting to get dark and the heat of the day has simmered down to a comfortable warmth, the sky burning orange over the sprawling valley below them as the sun sets.

"They asked me if we were in a, quote, 'romantic relationship'." He tells her, putting air quotes around the words.

"And what did you say?" She asks, and neither of them have turned to look at the other yet. They're trying to pretend this conversation isn't important, like the answers to their questions don't carry the weight of the world.

"I lied." His reply is simple, and not really an answer at all.  _I guess I'll have to get used to that,_ she thinks to herself.

She turns to say something else but finds him already watching her - and closer than she thought he was, too.

_Not close enough_ , her wayward brain supplies, and she doesn't even bother to chastise herself.

When she thinks back to spending the night in his bed - the whole night and neither of them tried anything physical beyond holding each other, when she thinks of yesterday morning and how she's never been that intimate with someone in her entire life, when she thinks about the way they looked at each other in his orange grove days before - she accepts the feelings that come with those memories. She accepts that she's in love with him, and allows herself to enjoy the feeling.

"Hey, Dani?" He says softly, "if I kiss you right now, will you shoot me?"

Her voice is light and teasing as if she's playing coy when she looks up at him from beneath her eyelashes, leans closer, and says, "Only one way to find out."

He leans just a little further, but hesitates before actually kissing her.

"Coward." She whispers with a cocky smile, and he raises his eyebrows.

"Oh, am I now?" He replies breathlessly, and they're so close that his lips slightly brush hers when he speaks, and she huffs out a soft little laugh that sends a pleasant shiver down his spine.

"Are you gonna kiss me or what?" She asks, something akin to a challenge in her voice.

Charlie Crews has never been one to back down from a challenge.

So he kisses her, and for a second they both stand still, like they're both realising at the same moment  _oh my god I'm kissing my partner this is a really bad idea what is happening_ , until Dani slowly moves her hands up over his chest and around his neck, pulling him closer and tilting her head a little like she's looking for better access. Just like that they both melt into the kiss, and he slides his arms around her waist, pulling her closer and closer still until there's no discernible space between the two of them.

* * *

Later that night they're lying in bed together, and she's curled into his chest, his arms around her as she traces her fingertips over his scars and tattoos.

There's the spiders web she saw this morning, stretched over his right shoulder (his left if you're facing him) where her head currently rests; a basic outline of birds flying over a horizon and a sinking sun over his left pectoral, with a Chinese symbol a little way beneath it. On his right side, over his ribs, two badges - one from when he was an Officer, the other his Detective badge. She can see the few extra lines on the patrolman's badge where it was obviously touched up after he got out. On the right side of his chest, just above a long white scar which stretches round to his back, is (much like the pig on his back) a clumsily drawn '51-50'. She traces her thumb over it, and wants to ask. She feels him tense up a little, like he's waiting for her to say something.

But, she promised him this morning that she wouldn't, so she keeps her mouth shut, and continues to trace her way through the past he doesn't believe in. Her thumb finds its way over the small, circular white scar where his chest meets his shoulder, and she grimaces, remembering every detail of the moments after the gun went off.

"Hard to believe it's almost been a year, huh?" He offers quietly, trying to coax her into talking. Her silent examination of his skin is unnerving him somewhat.

"Ten months and three weeks." She replies, her voice just as quiet, and Charlie looks down at her in surprise. Now she's actively avoiding looking him in the eye, and that in itself is freaking him out a little.

He opens his mouth to say something - he's not sure what yet, he's winging it here, but she interrupts him before he can start.

"The day before you got shot I showed up here, drunk off my ass and yelling at you. Remember?"

He nods, and she looks up at him at last and sighs. "I have been …on the wagon, you might say, since then."

He manages to school his surprise, but she catches it. "I know, I know. Shocking, right? I don't know, Charlie, I just- I showed up at your house, completely wasted, and started lecturing  _you_  about responsibility." She reminds him, "and then when you got shot I thought - 'hey, I'd really like a drink right about now', but they needed someone to go with you to the hospital. Your Dad couldn't go because he was in the wheelchair, so it was me. And-"

"And you didn't leave." He finishes for her. Her eyes snap from the scar to his eyes again.

He smiles, almost shyly, "Tidwell told me."

He moves his left arm up to sweep her hair back off her face and she catches sight of part of the tattoo on his inside forearm. Another Chinese symbol a little below the crook of his elbow, then two short, regimented lines of blue and red teardrops. The lower half, closest to his hand, is covered with a bandage.

"What happened?" She asks, "That wasn't there earlier."

"No," He replies, his voice as cautiously blank as his face, "It wasn't."

She blinks at him, before remembering her earlier promise. Instead of speaking, she kisses the palm of his hand and leans back down to rest her head on his chest.

"The blue ones are people I've lost since- since  _then_." He tells her after a pause, and she can feel the tension in every one of his muscles as he removes the light bandage and lets her look at the whole thing, "the Seybolts and my Mother."

He doesn't need to explain that if the blue ones are the lives he's lost, the red ones are the lives he's taken. There's four blue teardrops and five red, two of which still look a little irritated around the edges. He must have added them for Roman and the rogue FBI Agent. So the other three must be… Lonnie Garth, she remembers, the crack-head he shot on their first case together, then Arthur Tins, the escaped child killer during the Earthquake…  _so who's the fifth?_  She wonders.

He's not volunteering the information, and, since she  _did_  promise not to ask, she doesn't.

It's not healthy, this business of keeping all these secrets, but as they say, old habits die hard. They'll find their way out of them one day, but for now they are content to lie together, in his bed, trusting that though there may be secrets, there are no lies.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "What are you doing in here?" Charlie asks as he steps through the doorway, trying not to sound guilty, frightened or angry. He's not sure he pulls it off.
> 
> "I was looking for the bathroom," Dani replies tersely, "but I found the Batcave instead." She's copying his habit of talking to a person but not really talking to them. It makes him smile involuntarily.
> 
> Things are starting to slot into place for her. Things that she hadn't been aware even meant anything, people that had been and gone such a long time ago she barely remembers them, the big thing that she'll never forget - it's all connected. She'll probably even remember more, connect more, as they go along.
> 
> God, it's all Zen, isn't it? Dominos that started falling more than a decade ago are still falling now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **IMPORTANT A/N: There's frank discussion of child abuse and victim blaming in this chapter, so if that's triggering for you and you don't want to read this chapter, send me a message and I'll summarise it for you in a less triggering way or whatever you need. There's no graphic descriptions or anything, but I'll still warn for it just in case it affects any of my readers. There's a * at the start and end of the passage that talks about it.

"What are you doing in here?" Charlie asks as he steps through the doorway, trying not to sound guilty, frightened or angry. He's not sure he pulls it off.

"I was looking for the bathroom," Dani replies tersely, "but I found the Batcave instead." She's copying his habit of talking to a person but not really talking to them. It makes him smile involuntarily.

"You're a fucking idiot, Charlie." Dani announces as she takes in the batshit-crazy-conspiracy-map on the wall of his enormous master closet. Seriously, she's pretty sure you could fit her entire first studio apartment inside this thing and still have room for a small garden.

"I'm sorry?" Charlie replies in surprise, leaning against the end of his rack of shirts.

"You have this-  _all this_ ," She says, gesturing to the evidence on the wall, "you have surveillance photos and LAPD files and newspaper clippings and most of the story, and yet you never thought to look at the people around you," she turns to face him, her arms folded across her chest, "and ask yourself; 'I wonder who might know something about these people?' given that he," she gestures to the picture of Jack Reese, "is my father, and  _he_ ," she gestures to the picture of Mickey Rayborn, "is my godfather, and I grew up surrounded by all these guys you're looking into!"

He blinks rapidly at her, "Mickey Rayborn is your godfather? I didn't know that."

_Maybe that's why you were on his boat_ , he thinks, and files the thought away for further contemplation later.

She rolls her eyes at him in exasperation as she turns back to face the wall, "You never asked."

"You said you didn't know if your father had anything to do with me going to prison." He tries to keep the accusation out of his voice, and he mostly succeeds - although that's largely because she's only wearing one of his pale blue dress shirts and it's really, really difficult to stay focused on the task at hand when his hot, young, maybe-sort-of-girlfriend is showing him that much skin.

"I didn't," She assures him, "but I can tell you about- before." She says carefully, her voice getting a little softer, "If you want." She waves her hand in the general direction of the six boxes in the centre of the wall. Things are starting to slot into place for her, seeing it all laid out here like this. Things that she hadn't been aware even meant anything, people that had been and gone such a long time ago she barely remembers them, the big thing that she'll never forget - it's all connected. She'll probably even remember more, connect more, as they go along.

_God, it's all Zen, isn't it? Dominos that started falling more than a decade ago are still falling now._

"Everything really is connected." She mutters under her breath.

He thinks about commenting on the fact that a) he's been trying to tell her that for almost three years now, and b) he knew she was listening to him when he tells Zen stories, but chooses instead to say something else.

"You don't have to, Dani." His words surprise him - of course she doesn't have to, but she's offering him information that could help him with his off-the-books investigation, and he's not immediately snatching it up? "I'm not with you because I think you know things."

"I know." She replies immediately, "but I think it's about time you knew what I know. Maybe there'll be some overlaps with what you already know, and maybe we'll be able to find the answers to some of the gaps."

"Okay," He agrees, pushing himself off the wall and walking closer to her, so he's standing next to her rather than behind her.

She hesitates at first, trailing her fingertips over varying pieces of his evidence, but pauses after a second, her fingers hover over the photo of Jimmy Dunn. She says his name, softly, but with so much hatred and disgust (and a slight kick of fear) that it surprises him. His eyes move from an intense focus on the wall, to an intense focus on her. Her hands are steady but her jaw is clenched and her eyes are narrowed.

"He's not in one of the six boxes?" She sounds surprised, still not taking her eyes off of his grainy black and white photo.

"Should he be?" Charlie asks, remembering finding nothing on the man that would suggest he was a part of the group of dirty cops who were responsible for the Bank of LA robbery, other than that he was, of course, dead before his time - and under suspicious circumstances at that.

"Jimmy Dunn is-  _was_ , a bad, bad man." Dani mutters succinctly, "And he didn't kill himself. Nor did he accidentally shoot himself whilst cleaning his gun."

Charlie feels a strange sense of trepidation, like in standing in the yard and seeing two rival gang members catching eyes as they prepare for a fight, and stands completely still, holding his breath and watching her, just waiting.

Her eyes suddenly flick around to meet his, and her gaze is so pointed, so clear, that for an absurd moment he wants to shut his eyes to shut her out - like she can see into his very soul just by looking at him - and he's afraid of what she'll find should she chose to look.

"I'm only telling you this part because he's already dead, Charlie." She tells him, still wearing the  _I-know-all-your-secrets_  look, "If he was still alive, I don't know if I would."

The way she speaks tonight is a little strange. Charlie's not sure she sounds like herself, and he wants to know why.

"Why?" He asks, and she smiles - but there's no happiness to it. Hey eyes are still pointed and clear, and they still look (as always) like they've seen too much. It's the hollow smile she wears for Tidwell, wears in front of perps and cons and the one she wears when she wants him to  _just stop talking_. It's not the one she wears around him these days - it's not  _his_ smile.

"Because, I've noticed you tend to get a little… protective… of- of me. And if Jimmy Dunn wasn't already dead, you might do something stupid." She says, and he knows that by 'something stupid' she means hunt him down the way he did Roman, and kill him. A sick feeling gnaws away in the pit of his stomach, worry ripples down his spine and precursory anger tightens the muscles across his shoulders and upper back.

Dani is not one to speak of such protectiveness - as far as he's deduced, she'd rather they pretend he doesn't react the way he's tended to, and yet here she is, saying it so openly, so easily. He has a feeling he's not going to like what comes next.

He raises his eyebrows, an invitation to continue, not trusting himself to speak.

"Jimmy Dunn was a dirty cop because he owed my father and Rayborn. He was accused of picking up an underage prostitute, but the two of them didn't believe he knew she wasn't legal - they'd all been friends for years, graduated the academy together and everything - so they, of course, backed him up." She pauses, running her fingertips over the grainy facial features of Jimmy Dunn's photograph.

"And you think he knew?" His mouth asks without his permission.

*

"I know he did. In fact, I think he probably sought her out because of it." Her voice is very carefully blank when she talks, but Charlie's seen Dani angry. He knows what hurt, scared, angry, pissed off, look like on her, and right now she's got that slow-burning-rage look to her - the look that cons get when someone threatens their family on the outside. He doesn't like to see it on her face.

"What makes you say that?" He asks, wondering if he ought to just stop talking, but his curiosity is getting the better of him.

"Because just two years later, Jimmy Dunn is seeking out girls he doesn't have to pay who are even younger than the pro."

He finds his throat is suddenly dry, and he hopes, hell _, he prays_ , he's over-reacting, that he's got this one wrong, but her earlier comment about his over-protectiveness and her only telling him since Dunn was dead suddenly roll through his head.

"How much younger?" He asks quietly.

"Around eleven, twelve." Her voice is tight and for the first time, there's a slight shake to her hand. Just the smallest of tremors, nothing that you'd notice if you weren't looking for it, but he sees everything about her. It's like he can't help himself.

Another memory resurfaces.

" _Reese, how long have you been drinking?"_

" _Since I was twelve."_

Oh, god.

No, no, no.

"Dani…" His voice is but a whisper, and he finds his hand is suspended in mid-air between them, like he wants to touch her, but isn't sure if he's allowed.

She shakes her head, just a fraction, and he drops his hand to his side immediately.

"It went on for a little over two years," she continues after collecting herself, "until I told my father."

"And he killed Dunn and made it look like suicide." Charlie guesses, picturing it in his head; Jimmy Dunn coming home to find Jack Reese waiting for him with a furious expression and murderous intent. He wonders if he's judged Jack Reese too soon.

"Nope." Dani shakes him from his musing, "the opposite actually. He didn't believe me - told me to stop making up stories about a great cop like Dunn and that I better not breathe a word of it to my Mom."

"Or what?" He asks, feeling sickened with fury at Jack Reese's treatment of his young partner.

"Or he'd punish me." She says softly, shrugging her shoulders in an attempt to seem detached from her own story.

Charlie wonders how anyone (especially a cop) could hear that kind of tale from a child (especially your own child) and not believe them. Then he feels confused - because if Jack Reese didn't kill Jimmy Dunn, who did? The father of another of his victims, perhaps?

"My Father didn't believe me, and I couldn't tell my Mom without him finding out, so I turned to the one person left I trusted. My godfather, Uncle Mickey. He didn't have kids back then, so I was kind of a surrogate of sorts. And when he found out, he reacted like I wanted my father to." Her voice wavers at the end of the sentence, and he realises with a jolt that other than that night when Rick Larson broke into her house, he's never seen her cry before. His arms ache to hold her, but he restrains himself, locking down all his muscles so that he won't reach out for her the way he desperately wants to.

All little-Dani Reese wanted was for her father to love her, to support her, to  _believe_  in her.

What she got was the opposite. What she got was, simply put, not fair.

"He told me I should tell my father, and when I told him that I had… that's about when they went from best friends to the way they are now."

"So Mickey Rayborn killed Jimmy Dunn to protect you?" Charlie asks softly, the idea that Mickey Rayborn was some kind of hero to little-Dani, that he might need to re-evaluate some of his opinions of the man he considers an enemy, is a strange feeling - but one he's not entirely uncomfortable with, not if he's the man who saved his Dani.  _His_  Dani? His Dani.

She nods and drops her hand from the picture. "Even though he was dead, I couldn't get rid of the things he'd beaten into me - that I was- was dirty and worthless and unlovable, but, you know, I could shut up the voice in my head that said he was right when I drank. So, I just... didn't stop. For more than ten years."

*

He stays quiet and lets her talk. She doesn't open up often, but if she feels like she can now, to him, he owes it to her to give her the space to do that. When she wants comforting from him, she'll let him - until then, he knows she'll want to stand on her own two feet and hold her own hand.

"I'm not under any illusions about him. I know he's not the nicest guy, Charlie. I know you think he had something to do with you going to prison, and maybe he did. But he's not- he's not all bad." She says, almost hesitantly, "Charlie if he did have something to do with what happened to you, I need you to be honest with me, okay? I can take it. It's not like I have him up on some pedestal."

"He wasn't the reason I went to prison, Dani. He had something to do with the whole situation, but he wasn't the one who decided to set me up." Charlie reassures her, finding it harder to clamp down on his instinct to pull her into his arms.

"Okay." She sighs, nodding like she's letting it sink in, "okay."

She sighs and steps closer to him, and he takes that as his signal that it's okay to touch her now. He opens his arms and she steps into his embrace, resting her head on his chest and letting him wind his arms around her, attempting to protect her from the past.

"When I was at the FBI they showed me this photo of you." She tells him after a minute, "You were arguing with my Dad in a park."

_I never argued with your Dad in a park_. He thinks to himself, and he's about to tell her so when she carries on speaking.

"I thought it looked weird so I went to my Mom's place and broke into my Dad's office, and I found all these pictures of him arguing with Carl Ames. I guess somebody must have sent them to him, but the FBI guys had photo-shopped you in Ames' place, trying to make me think you had something to do with his disappearance."

"Trying to make you think?" He says and she tilts her head back to look up at him. The angle coupled with their proximity makes him seem even taller than he already is, plus the light bulb hanging behind him gave him a vaguely saint like appearance.

"My father is dead." She tells him, calm as anything.

"Your father is dead." He repeats back to her, and it's not really a question or a statement. More like he's looking for clarification.

"Roman told me that my father cried when he killed him." She looks back down then, her ear over his heartbeat, the continual and steady  _thump-thump thump-thump_ sounding a sharp contrast to their topic of conversation.

"Do you think he was telling the truth?" Charlie asks, resting his chin atop her head.

"I don't think he was lying." She replies and he smiles involuntarily.

"You are so Zen today." He tells her, before yelping as she pinches him on the side of his stomach.

"You take that back!"

"That wasn't very Zen." He complains as she walks past him and out of the closet. He follows behind her because she's undoing the buttons on his shirt as she walks, sliding it off her shoulders before turning to face him at the end of his bed, completely naked.

"What about now, Charlie? Is this Zen?" The smirk on her face is utterly delicious, and he wants to kiss it off her lips until she forgets everything but his name and he's the one wearing the smirk.

Considering Zen is all about calm, steady simplicity, he's pretty sure that right now, she's the exact  _opposite of Zen_.

He's never been happier to be barely Zen-ish in his entire life.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I'm surprised they haven't fired you." She says, her eyes flicking over to him as she pulls up to the curb, "That's what they're aiming for, right?"
> 
> "That or putting me back inside." He says flatly as they climb out of the car.
> 
> "Doesn't make any sense," she mutters as they walk up to the house, "Why the hell do they want you out of the way so bad?"
> 
> "I don't know." He tells her honestly. He wishes he did - it would certainly make things easier, but as it stands, he's still defending himself against invisible demons wielding swords with more power than should be afforded to a person.
> 
> Then Dani's Mom opens the door, effectively tabling that discussion.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry about the gap between updates (and that this one is shorter than previous updates), things are a little hectic at the moment - but I'll do my best to keep the updates regular and as frequent as I can! (:

Life has been significantly calmer for the last few days since their disastrous interviews with IAD and heavy conversation the next morning. They've pretty much spent the last four days cutting themselves off from the rest of the world and hiding away alone together in Charlie's mansion.  _It's funny to think I can be so in love with you, and still not know so many things about you,_ he thinks as he walks back into the kitchen after mediating on the patio, intent on pouring himself a glass of juice.

Dani is back from her run, standing by the sink in her shorts and tank top and talking on the phone - he resists the strong impulse to go over to her and kiss her breathless only because she's speaking in rapid Farsi, which means it can only be her mother she's talking to.

She jumps when he lets the fridge door fall closed, turning to face him as he leans against the counter and drinks his mango juice.

Her words get faster, and he gets the sense that she's trying to close the conversation; he points to himself and then to the doorway, silently asking if she wants him to go so she can carry on talking to her mother - not that he understands a word, of course, but she just shakes her head and holds up one finger, indicating she's almost done.

Then she says something that's so filled with exasperation and sarcasm that even without having a clue what she's actually saying, Charlie feels a little sorry for her mother.

She hangs up the phone and looks at him for a second, her eyes narrowed and her arms folded across her chest. He raises his eyebrows at the display and waits to see what she's going to say.

"My mother wants to meet you." Dani informs him eventually.

He can't help the smile that tugs at his lips as he sets his finished glass down on the counter. "And that's… bad?"

"I- It's not  _bad_  it's just…"

"Soon?" He tries and she shakes her head immediately, and her disagreement comes as a relief.

"No, it's just that I don't- I've never." She cuts herself off and takes a deep breath, then says in a rush, "I've never taken anyone home to meet my parents- well, my mother, before. I mean, growing up with a Father like mine doesn't exactly encourage the idea."

"If she wants to meet me, that means you've told her about me." He says casually, wearing the kind of smile that reaches up to his eyes.

"You mean other than what my Dad used to say about you?" She plays back, raising her eyebrows in a silent challenge.

"Other than that, yes." Charlie nods, still smiling, and they're basically staring each other down, seeing who's going to break first.

"Yes, Charlie. I've talked to my Mom about you." She sighs eventually, with no small amount of exasperation. If he didn't know her better he'd say she was blushing, but it's his understanding that Dani doesn't do that. She doesn't blush, or giggle or enjoy the use of pet names - funny how he's also learning how to get her to do all of those things since their relationship changed.

"What I'm getting from that is that you must really like me." He takes a step toward her and he's teasing her, trying to see what he can make her say, but she's just as good at - and as fond of - this game as he is.

"You'd think, huh. But not really, no." She shrugs, taking a step backwards. If he wants to see what he can make her say, she wants to see what she can make him do.

"No? You sure about that, honey?" He's advancing on her with something akin to a smirk on his face. She decides she likes cocky Charlie - she also decides to keep that to herself, if he knew it drove her crazy in the best possible way he'd never let her hear the end of it - and he'd use it on her all the time in an attempt to win arguments.

"I'm sure." She lies as her back hits the fridge. He steps so close to her then that she can count his freckles and probably his eyelashes to, were she of a mind to. He presses his lips to the corner of her mouth, then kisses a path way across her jaw and down one side of her throat, making her fingers curl into the material in the back of his shirt and her breath to stutter like she's trying to control herself.

"Well that's a shame," He tells her, "Because I like you." The smug tone of his voice telling he doesn't believe her in the slightest. It makes her feel kind of giddy to know that they're starting to find their sea legs with this, so to speak - they've created enough security in each other that there's no looming sense of rejection - no suggestion that this isn't exactly what they both want.

"I need to shower." She protests, attempting to wriggle out of his arms, but he just hums appreciatively against the skin in the crook of her neck.

"Lead the way." he says, his voice low and almost a growl.

"Charlie-" It's meant to be a scold, a protest, but it comes out far breathier than she intended, something closer to a moan that serves only to spur him on.

His hands settle on her hips and pull her closer to him until they're pressed completely, deliciously together as one of her hands moves up to the back of his neck tugging his head back just enough that she can kiss him on the lips, forcefully, almost urgently. That's the last straw for his ability to hold back and take it slow, so he turns them toward the archway and walks them toward the stairs - but they're still wound up in each other kissing and tugging at random articles of clothing just to get closer, and after the second time they stumble over each other, he gives up, and picks her up.

"Put me down!" She gasps as his hands settle high on the backs of her thighs to hold her up.

"Nope." He says cheerfully, tipping his head back just enough to kiss her again. "Can't do that."

It takes her roughly two seconds to realise there are certain advantages to this position that she rather enjoys, and she kisses him back again with the kind of abandon that has them somehow losing their clothes without separating from each other much at all. In the end they don't even make it half way up the stairs.

* * *

The following evening the two of them are on their way to Lila's house, both mildly apprehensive - although Charlie seems to be looking forward to the meeting more than his partner. He can't deny that he's certainly curious to see inside the house where Dani was raised, and to finally meet the woman whom Dani is so protective of. Dani is driving, as usual, and they're about half way to the Reese household when Charlie's phone rings.

"Crews."

"Hi, it's Detective Seever." Her voice is chirpy as ever and he silently wonders if this is going to be one of those conversations that leaves him feeling like he was just having a chat with the most controlled and collected Tornado ever.

"Detective? I thought you'd be Mayor by now." He says, "On account of the whole Rayborn thing."

"Not yet, but I'll keep you posted." She tells him, sounding mildly embarrassed at the mention of Rayborn's name, "I was actually trying to get a hold of Detective Reese, but she's not answering her phone, so Captain Tidwell told me to call you."

"She's driving at the moment, what's going on?" He asks, surprised that Tidwell would acquiesce to making the suggestion.

Dani throws him a questioning look, realising he's obviously talking about her, he shrugs his shoulders and shakes his head in response.

"Well, Detective Reese has been cleared by IAD to return to duty, providing she passes the psychological evaluation, of course." she says, and he can hear her typing in the background - multi tasking as usual, and still at work despite the fact it's edging towards eight o'clock in the evening.

"Good," he replies, "I'm assuming I'm still suspended."

"I'm afraid so," Seever says to him, and he can hear the guilt in her voice - like it's her fault he got suspended and she got promoted. "Also, I should probably tell you, Captain Tidwell has been suspended as well."

"Really? Why?" Charlie asks in surprise, and the look Dani's throwing him now suggests she's not above beating it out of him if he doesn't loop her in on the conversation, but he waits to tell her until he knows the whole story.

"He did help you evade the brass - and I'm told he interfered with the SWAT search of the building they originally thought Roman was hiding Reese in." She explains, and Charlie feels equal parts grateful for Tidwell's help, and irritated at the thought that the man's actions had been for the same reason as his own.

"So who's running things down there now?" He asks, and he hears her sigh into the receiver.

"A guy named Ellis. He's one of them - you know, from IAD. Apparently they want to keep a closer eye on the station for a while." She doesn't sound happy about it, but it's not like they didn't expect some form of retribution for their off-the-books race to get Dani back. He'd do it all over again and not change a damn thing - he wonders absently how IAD would have reacted to a statement like  _that_. Plus, he's not stupid. He knows that 'keeping a close eye on the station' really means watching him like a hawk if and when they let him back on the Force.

They end the call, and his phone is barely back in his pocket before Dani's on him. "What's going on?" She asks immediately, and Charlie grins in spite of himself. Some things never change.

"You're cleared for duty once you've passed the psych eval, and Tidwell's suspended. We've got a rat in his place." He tells her, all at once.

She sighs, like Seever had, and tightens her hands on the wheel.

"But they're still keeping you hanging?" She asks, turning onto her Mother's street.

"Yep." He says, popping his lips, "But it's not exactly a surprise, you know?"

"I'm surprised they haven't fired you." She says, her eyes flicking over to him as she pulls up to the curb, "That's what they're aiming for, right?"

"That or putting me back inside." He says flatly as they climb out of the car.

"Doesn't make any sense," she mutters as they walk up to the house, "Why the hell do they want you out of the way so bad?"

"I don't know." He tells her honestly. He wishes he did - it would certainly make things easier, but as it stands, he's still defending himself against invisible demons wielding swords with more power than should be afforded to a person.

Then her Mom opens the door, effectively tabling that discussion.

* * *

"…and then she said, 'No maamaan, I can do it myself!', and the next thing you know, she's hurtling down the street on roller-blades - and it didn't matter how many times she fell over, she kept insisting, 'No maamaan, I can do it by myself!'." Lila Reese laughs as she tells the story of seven-year-old Dani's first attempt to learn to roller-skate.

"So your stubborn streak isn't a new thing then, huh?" Charlie asks her with a grin, and she narrows her eyes at him for a second.

"Says _you_." She shoots back, setting her knife and fork down on her now empty plate.

He shrugs, still smiling, and takes a mouthful of his drink as Lila stands to collect the plates and cutlery.

"Nakheyr, Maamaan, I'll do it." Dani protests, switching between Farsi and English. He's noticed the two of them tend to do that - like the ghost of Jack Reese is hanging around the house waiting to scold them when they get comfortable enough to speak in Lila's Mother tongue.

"See! Stubborn as an Ox." Lila tells him, shaking her head at her daughter.

"She really is," Charlie agrees, turning to his young partner, "You really are."

"Oh, no. No, no." Dani says, pointing between the two of them, "You two are not gonna gang up on me all of a sudden!"

Lila just laughs as she takes the plates and cutlery out into the kitchen.

"I like your Mom." Charlie says, almost conspiratorially, leaning closer to Dani once Lila is out of earshot. "She seems fun."

Dani rolls her eyes at him, but her smile betrays her affection. She's just relieved the two of them seem to get on so well.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Farsi/Persian to English translations:
> 
> Nakheyr - No
> 
> Maamaan - Mom/Mama


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She's wondering how it's possible that the only person who really, truly understands her is a Zen-spouting, fruit-obsessed, occasionally ruthlessly violent, sometimes cop, ex-con. She wonders absent mindedly if he feels the same way about her - being in love with an angry, self destructive, emotionally screwed up, sometimes alcoholic, ex-addict. She realises abruptly that she didn't include 'cop' in her own description of herself, and wonders if that means something. If she's not a cop, what the hell is she?
> 
> They stare each other down; his first love and his last. They should be the same person, Dani thinks, if there was any kind of fairness in the universe. But that's not how life works, and it's certainly not how Charlie's life has worked. He believes everything is connected - that everything happens for a reason. She's shying away from applying that logic to this situation, refusing to believe that the universe decided to throw twelve years of bullshit and nightmares at him just so that the two of them could meet. No way. She's not worth that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some more on Charlie's tattoos! I'm so so so so super sorry about the delay in updates, I've got a wicked cold at the moment and every time I went to try and write this chapter I made an inhuman noise and just sort of face-planted my keyboard. But. I'm hoping to return to at least semi-normal updating speed now!

"Hey, so, can I come home yet?" Charlie searches foggy, sleep-heavy head until it clicks that the young, female voice coming through his phone belongs to Rachel Seybolt.

"Can- what?" He asks, propping himself up on one elbow and forcing his eyes open so he doesn't accidentally fall back to sleep while still on the phone. He'd initially answered the phone expecting it to be Dani tell him to drag his ass out of bed and meet her at a crime scene before remembering he's suspended and she hasn't gone back to work at LAPD yet, and that she's currently in bed with him anyway.

"Can I come back to LA yet or am I still in exile?" She asks, over enunciating her words like she's sarcastically making fun of her not-Uncle.

"You're not in  _exile,_  Rachel." He says wryly, unable to help himself from enjoying her regular-teenager-style dramatics.

"Whatever. We're at the airport and I don't know whether to go somewhere else or come back to California." She tells him, sounding increasingly exasperated.

"We?" He parrots back, raising his eyebrows even though he knows she can't see him.

She huffs at him, "I,  _I_  am at the airport and I want to know if- oh, never mind."

"Okay, hang on. Yes, you can come home now." He tells her before she just hangs up on him in frustration. He feels Dani roll off her side and onto her back next to him, blinking herself awake and looking up at him inquisitorially.

"Rachel." He mouths at her. She doesn't react beyond slightly raised eyebrows and a slow nod.

"You sure? You're not going to hand me another secret identity and kick me out of the country again are you?" She asks, sounding equal parts sarcastic and serious.

"I'm sure," He says, grinning at her description of the events, then letting his smile drop he adds, "I took care of the problem."

There's a pause on the line, then she just says, "I don't want to know, do I?"

"No," He admits, laying back down and letting Dani curl up against his chest, "No, you probably don't."

"Great. So, I'll see you tomorrow?" She says shortly, but he can all-but hear the smile in her voice.

"See you tomorrow." He agrees, and she hangs up the phone without saying goodbye. She doesn't like to do that, he's noticed.

He reaches across and sets his phone back on his bedside cabinet, then his hands return to Dani like magnets, one hand settling on her forearm which is slung low on his waist, the other one drawing slow circles on her back. She turns her head slightly and kisses the centre of his chest.

"So Rachel's coming back." He informs her unnecessarily.

"Where did she go?" She asks, tracing her fingers over the marks on his chest, as has become a habit for her since they started sharing a bed.

"I don't know." He says, "Roman threatened her so I sent her away. To protect her."

She nods in understanding, but offers no further opinion. Her hands have paused in their exploration, repeatedly trailing over the scrawled '51-50' on his side.

"You want to ask." He says.

"I promised I wouldn't." She counters.

"You did." He agrees, and she shifts her body weight forwards and then sits up so she's straddling his hips. She continues to trail her fingers, slowly, over each mark on his chest that she can see, only this time she can explore him with her eyes as well.

"I don't mind." He tells her, and that draws her eyes up to meet his own. "I trust you." His voice is quiet, but incautious.

"This one." She says decisively, pointing to the Chinese symbol on the right side of his chest, asking before she loses her nerve.

His eyes flick down to the tattoo she's talking about, "Zen." He tells her simply.

She nods, otherwise betraying no reaction. "This one." She brushes her thumb over the tattoo above it, a simplistic line drawing of birds flying over the horizon and sinking sun.

"It's a pretty standard prison tattoo. It means, I was born free, I should be free now." He flexes his fingers before splaying them over her knees to ground himself against the tidal wave of memories that flood back as he talks about it all for the first time. Sure, he's made comments to people, but he's never explained his tattoos to anyone.

Next her hand moves to the left side of his chest, over the '51-50'. "I feel like I should know what this means." She says, more to herself than to him.

He swallows forcefully. He doesn't particularly want to explain this one.

"United States Penal Code Fifty-One-Fifty, a person who is a danger unto themselves and/or others, usually as a direct result of being mentally unsound." He recites, the words forever burned into his mind as permanently as the tattoo is carved into his skin. She scrunches her eyebrows together, not understanding why he'd tattoo that on himself. Then it clicks that he probably didn't have much say in it.

"A gang of guards beat the hell out of me with a baton and then held me down and put it on me for giving them unsolicited advice about how to find inner peace." His voice is detached and clinical and she hates it, she hates it, she hates it. She blinks back tears and feels overwhelmed by the sudden urge to apologise to him, to beg for his forgiveness even though she was just a child when all this was going on. She's never felt less like a cop, not if that's what they consider acceptable behaviour. It makes her feel sick to her stomach. It makes her never want to go back.

She takes a deep breath and then lets it out slowly, leaning down and pressing a slow kiss to the mark before sitting back up.  _Enough_ , she thinks, deciding to ask him about the rest another time.

"I'm okay." He tries to reassure her, "I'm past it."

"You sure about that?" She asks, not meaning to say it out loud.

What she doesn't expect is the easy smile that appears on his face. "Sure, I'm Zen, remember?"

"Zen-ish." She counters, smiling in spite of herself and reminding them both of their conversation a few weeks after they started working together.

He's still smiling, but he offers no further comment on the state of his Zen-ness.

After almost a full minute of silence, during which Dani attempts to process what she's heard, Charlie says with a hopeful grin, "Can we make out now?"

She can't stop the laugh that bubbles out of her as she leans down to kiss him, her brave, sometimes Zen warrior partner.

* * *

A little later that afternoon, Charlie tells her he's going to the Orange Grove to check on things, since the Oranges are now in season. He asks her if she wants to come with him, and she finds that for a second she's speechless. "I don't- I mean, I want to… but I-" She shakes her head like she's trying to shake her thoughts into place. He hears what she doesn't want to say though, and kisses her on the forehead. "It's okay." He tells her, "I'll be back in a couple of hours."

She nods and smiles sadly as he heads out the door.

_I'm not ready_.

She's frustrated with herself for letting it get to this point, where a now dead man had scared her enough to make her feel uncomfortable going somewhere that means so much to Charlie. The self-destructive thoughts eat away at her head and her heart until she realises she's standing in front of the liquor cabinet in Charlie's study with shaking hands and a clawing need to drink and drink and drink (what she imagines will be very, very good whiskey) until her problems are slurring like her words and stumbling like her feet and then fading to blackness like her head.

That serves as the final straw, and she heads upstairs to his closet - that she determinedly refuses to notice is becoming  _theirs_  - and changes into shorts, a tank and sneakers; her running uniform. She puts her iPod in her pocket and her headphones in her ears and she goes running, setting a punishing pace for herself and turning up her music until she's well and truly drowned out her cruel and cutting inner monologue.

* * *

She runs for a little over forty-five minutes before stopping off at their favourite coffee shop - stubbornly correcting herself to call it  _her_  favourite coffee shop as she stands in line. They may have been partners for more than two years now, but they've only been whatever they are now for a month or so. She's never felt this way about anyone before, let alone this fast.

She thinks then of Drake, her ex; suspect and boyfriend, that is. She's spent a lot of time over the last few years trying to untangle the complicated web that was their relationship - he was a suspect in a list of crimes that stretched a mile long, and she was an undercover cop attempting to flush him and other members of his gang out of the woodwork. They'd both told more lies than truths, and they'd been drunk, high, wasted or a combination of the three for pretty much their entire, however brief, relationship. The only quote-unquote serious relationship she's ever been in and she barely remembers most of it - sure, she's dated other people, and she and Tidwell could have been something serious if it wasn't for Crews, but other than him Drake is the only person in her romantic past she ever really considers to be important.  _Important? He took over your entire life_. She reminds herself. It's still complicated. Maybe it always will be. Maybe the fact that everything with Charlie is so astonishingly simple is what's throwing her. She knows him, and he knows her, and they're in love.  _There, that wasn't so hard, was it?_

With her and Drake, it had felt like they were together for years, but in reality it was little more than four or five months. It had been intense and violent and wonderful and terrifying and she had relished the out of control nature of the whole situation. Gradually the lies span out of control as she tried to keep both him and her boss happy, and the whole thing had blown up in her face.

Actually, if you want to be technical about it, it had blown up in _his_ face. It, in this instance being a .45 caliber handgun, and his face, being the roof of his mouth.

It's one of those memories that still haunts her to this day - she doesn't have all that many of them from the time she was using the hard drugs, but the ones she does have she locks away best she can, just so they can't hurt her - because this memory, out of all of them, is an exact indication of the moment she hit rock bottom.

They'd been shooting up together, her and a couple of the other - she forces herself to think the word - the other  _junkies_  who sometimes crashed at the basically empty, filthy loft. She remembers hearing the gun go off just as she pushed the plunger down - at first the thought the sound was in her head, like she was attaching the noise like a soundtrack to her doing one of the things she'd signed a contract with her boss swearing she wouldn't do. Then she'd realised it wasn't, and her last clear thought before she'd floated away was that she was really glad whoever the fuck it was had been far enough away to not get any of themself in her stash.

She's not sure exactly how long it was, time passes strangely when you're high, but a little while later she'd woken up, sprawled out on the bare concrete floor, her hair in a puddle of puke that she's pretty sure is someone else's, and realised there was blood everywhere. There was a little on the ceiling high in the corner, a lot on the wall, and what looked like an ocean's worth on the ground, although she couldn't work out if the fact that she was still sort of high was making it seem like there was more than there actually was.

That was when she realised that Drake was the one lying in the dark red pool; she crawled across the floor to his side until she felt something wet on her hands and realised she was literally sitting in his blood. She'd immediately turned away and thrown up on the floor, unnoticed tears streaming down her cheeks.

_Oh, god. This isn't happening._ _This isn't real, you're hallucinating, check again. It's not him. It can't be, he loves you. He wouldn't do this to you._

As soon as she'd gotten her breath back, she'd turned back to him and seen the full, new bag poking out of his pocket. It was more than she'd ever taken in one hit - she didn't have any clue whether her body could cope with that much this soon after her first high of the day, but she found she didn't really care. She shot it all and then curled up on his chest and let the dope take her away, completely unable to remember whether she was a cop or a criminal.

She's jolted from the memory by someone knocking into her, presumably on their way out of the coffee shop. She jumps in surprise as the pretty blonde woman apologises. She starts to tell her it's no problem, until she recognises the woman from an old newspaper - she's pretty sure the picture is in Charlie's file, too.

Her name is Jennifer Conover, and she's the kind of woman who Dani knows was probably stunningly beautiful ten years ago.  _No wonder he was in love with you_ , she thinks to herself uncharitably. She decided a while ago that anyone who believes Charlie to be capable of murdering three innocent people - one of whom was just a child, can't be all that intelligent - or have known him particularly well in the first damn place.

"You're Jenifer." She says, and the woman looks startled.

"How-" she starts, narrowing her eyes.

"I'm Dani Reese, I'm Charlie's-" she hesitates, "Partner."  _Except not just at work,_  she adds on to her statement in her head.

"Right." Jennifer says slowly, "It's nice to meet you."

It's awkward, god, it's so damn awkward you can practically taste it, because it's written all over Jenifer's face that she knows exactly what kind of 'partners' Dani and Charlie are - at least, she thinks she does.

"How could you not believe him?" She blurts out before she can stop herself, and Jenifer looks highly affronted and guilty at the same time.

"I- That's none of- It was compli-"

Dani realises that if she actually hears her refer to it as 'complicated' she might actually hit her, so she interrupts her instead.

"Not really. If you knew him at all you'd have known he didn't have anything to do with it." She tells her, an ugly kind of sharpness in her voice that cuts through the bullshit and the awkwardness as quickly and efficiently as Charlie's beloved flick knife.

"Oh and you know him better, I suppose." Jenifer challenges, drawing herself up to her full height.

"Yes." Dani replies simply, not backing down.

"I've known him since high school." Jen says, she herself not even sure why she's fighting with Charlie's partner-turned-girlfriend about this. She's happily married to someone else now. She doesn't miss him. She  _doesn't_.

"And yet you really thought he was capable of killing two of his best friends and their six year old son?" Dani fires back, and she's inexplicably reminded of the day she'd fought with Lt. Davis, and her father's old partner had told her  _It was a real dumb-fuck move, Dani, letting things go this far if you already knew you had a problem with drink before you went in!_

_If you really know me so fucking well how come you didn't realise I wasn't coping?_  She'd screamed back, and she feels that disconnect with the world, wondering how it's possible that the only person who really, truly understands her is a Zen-spouting, fruit-obsessed, occasionally ruthlessly violent, sometimes cop, ex-con. She wonders absently if he feels the same way about her - being in love with an angry, self destructive, emotionally screwed up, sometimes alcoholic, ex-addict. She realises abruptly that she didn't include 'cop' in her own description of herself, and wonders if that means something.  _If I'm not a cop, what the hell am I_?

They stare each other down; his first love and his last.  _They should be the same person_ , Dani thinks,  _if there was any kind of fairness in the universe_. But that's not how life works, and it's certainly not how Charlie's life has worked. He believes everything is connected - that everything happens for a reason. She's shying away from applying that logic to this situation, refusing to believe that the universe decided to throw twelve years of bullshit and nightmares at him just so that the two of them could meet. No way. She's not worth that.

* * *

She steps out of the cab onto the dirt road, keeping her eyes cast downwards. She reaches through the open window of the cab and hands the driver the money for driving her out here. He thanks her and drives away, leaving her alone in the scene from her nightmares - which still haven't stopped, even now that she's sharing Charlie's bed most nights. Then again, it has only been a little over a month since it all happened.

She turns in a slow circle, forcing herself to breathe slowly, and to think about it slowly too. Objectively speaking, the life-changing moment that happened for her and Charlie here notwithstanding, it's a very beautiful place. The wide paths between each cluster of orange trees look inviting, and the way the whole grove sprawls out in front of her for acres and acres just makes her want to pick a direction, walk in it, and lose herself amongst the colours and the tangy-citrus-sweet smelling air. No wonder Charlie loves it out here. She knows he's still here because she can see his car a little way up the road.

She walks slowly up the dirt road towards the Ferrari, hands buried deep in her pockets and forcing herself to be, as Charlie is so fond of saying, completely in the moment.

She is here, right now, standing on the same road where one month, one week and three days ago, her LAPD Partner Charlie Crews gave up on his quest for answers, threw away the freedom he had fought twelve hard years for, and offered up his life in exchange for hers. She'd gotten only the briefest glancing brush of his hand against hers before he'd been ripped away from her again - a brief, tiny moment in the grand scheme of things, but it was enough to be the dynamite that blew her world apart and put it back together in a way that felt far more solid and final than she'd ever known. She was Charlie's. Charlie was hers. That's it - no other way for either of them. By the time he'd returned and Roman was dead she was still trying to get the whole thing to really sink in to her head - although that's easier said than done; she and Charlie had barely even touched each other since they met - in fact, she's pretty sure they had some kind of clumsy, implied rule about it. Or at least, she did. Then, however, when she'd seen Charlie walking up the path towards them, all she'd wanted to do was throw herself into his arms.

It was a significantly bizarre, although not entirely unpleasant, turn of events.

As she walks she wonders, if two-and-a-half months ago, before she went to the FBI, if she'd been able to see where she and Charlie would end up, how would she feel about it? Really fucking scared, most likely. Intrigued. Turned on.

She promptly decides she doesn't care what she'd have thought back then, not when where they are is so - she searches for a word as Charlie wanders into her view just a little way up the path, and settles on - right.

When he looks up and sees her, he breaks into a real grin that makes her immediately glad that she decided to face her fear and return to the orange grove. She smiles back and let's him pull her in, arms around her waist, as soon as she's close enough.  _I really fucking love you_ , she thinks to herself before winding her arms around his neck and leaning up on her tip-toes to kiss him on the lips.


	8. Part One

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Congratulations, Detective Reese, you passed your psychological evaluation. Barely," Lieutenant Ellis remarks, scanning the report in front of him, "It's clear you've got un-dealt with anger management issues, but other than that it appears you're cleared to return to duty."
> 
> This is the third occupant of this office that she's worked for, and it seems she gets less respectful and more resentful of each Captain and Lieutenant in turn.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter Eight comes to you in two parts, so: here's Part One! (:

"Congratulations, Detective Reese, you passed your psychological evaluation. Barely," Lieutenant Ellis remarks, scanning the report in front of him, "It's clear you've got un-dealt with anger management issues, but other than that it appears you're cleared to return to duty."

This is the third occupant of this office that she's worked for, and it seems she gets less respectful and more resentful of each Captain and Lieutenant in turn.

"Great," Dani replies, "Can I have my badge and gun back now?"

He ignores her and continues talking, "My predecessor suggested that you be partnered with Sergeant Seever, but-" Ellis starts, but Dani cuts him off.

"Predecessor? You say that like Tidwell isn't coming back." She remarks, raising her eyebrows.

"You say that like it's of personal interest to you, Detective." Ellis counters, shooting her a look that's so smarmy and condescending that it makes her want to shoot him. Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on which side of the desk you're standing on) her sidearm is still sat on his desk between them.

"I can assure you that I have no 'personal interest' in Captain Tidwell whatsoever." She tells him, resisting the urge to smirk when she thinks of Charlie at home, probably meditating on the pool deck or in the shower after a run, the only man she has that kind - or any kind - of 'personal interest' in.

He stares her down for a minute, cocking his head to one side like he's examining her.

"As I was saying," he continues, his voice still as cold as his grey eyes, "You were originally supposed to be partnered with Sergeant Seever, but I feel that on account of the recent events, that might be a conflict of interest, so she has been partnered with O'Nassis."

O'Nassis is a good field officer, but infamous for causing problems by incorrectly filing paperwork - maybe they're hoping she'll whip him into shape.  _If anyone can_ … Dani thinks to herself. Based on what Charlie's told her, the woman sounds like a damn superhero.

Dani nods slowly, not sure what that's got to do with her. "So, who am I working with?" She asks with narrowed eyes, "And it'll all be a moot point anyway when Crews comes back." She's mostly saying it for effect, to see how he reacts - everyone knows her and Crews are a package deal.

" _If_  Detective Crews is permitted to return to duty - he killed an FBI Agent and is suspected of killing Roman Nevikov - a suspect wanted on charges in Russia as well as the United States." He corrects her, his face betraying no genuine emotion. His reaction was predictable and it doesn't tell her anything she didn't know already. "You're going to be working with Crowley." He tells her and she raises her eyebrows at him.

"Who?" She asks, praying that she's not about to get stuck with some wet-behind-the-ears rookie for a partner for the foreseeable future.

"Detective Crowley," He tells her, moving some reports around on his desk, "From Narcotics."

She blinks at him, waiting for him to tell her it's a joke. But, he doesn't seem like the type to have a sense of humour, let alone one about the job.

"You're kidding, right?" She says in shock, "You have read my file haven't you?"

"I know all about your little problem, Detective." He looks sternly at her, but there's a shot of sarcasm in there that makes her want to hit him, "But you're clean now, are you not?"

"Yeah, coming up four years," she replies fiercely, "But how do you expect me to stay clean if you surround me with drugs for ten hours a day, five days a week?"

"Well I suppose that's up to you, isn't it?"

Anger races through her, hot and potent; and then it crashes to a halt just before it reaches boiling point.

"You want me to fuck up." She says quietly, not looking at him.

"Excuse me?" He says politely, tilting his head to one side.

"Because if I fuck up in Narcotics, that means I'm back on the dope, which either means I end up dead or you have cause to fire me." She continues, and finds the words click into place as she says them; feeling horrified and frightened and really fucking pissed off all at the same time. She's staring across the desk at her badge and service weapon like she's never seen them before. "You couldn't find a way to get me to inform on Crews before, but now you've found a way to get him on administrative leave and keep him there, and  _now_ you're afraid of having someone loyal to him on the force so you want to get rid of me."

"My my, Detective Reese, that's quite an imaginative story. A touch paranoid though, hmm? You're not feeling paranoid are you, Reese?" There's a challenge in his voice that makes her skin prickle. She's right. Fucking hell.

"So that's my only choice?" She asks, folding her arms across her chest, "Go back to Narcotics?"

"There's nobody for you to work with in this department now." He insists.

"You want to send a known addict to work in a place where half my job would be to make connections with dealers and suppliers and then be given LAPD money to go and buy drugs from those people?" She clarifies, trying to figure out how this is really happening, and not some kind of warped dream.

"You could quit." He says casually, sliding a pair of glasses onto his face and looking down at a folder on the desk in front of him; not even looking at her, as if the whole conversation is boring him.

She can't process her thoughts fast enough to keep up with them all. She doesn't want to quit her job, regardless of how she ended up here, she enjoys it. She's good at it, too. But narcotics? Seriously? She'll be the first one to tell you that's easily one of the worst ideas anyone's ever had. She can't go back to narcotics. She can't because she's still not free from the tickle at the back of her throat that shows up when people mention coke or heroin, or when she's anything close to being around the stuff.

"I won't go back to Narcotics." She hears herself say. Her voice is hollow.

"Then I guess we've got our answer, haven't we, Detective?" Ellis looks up from the pages of the report, that same condescending look back on his face.

"I guess we have." She replies coolly, standing up.

"It's a shame we couldn't work something out." He tells her, so fucking polite it makes her want to kick his teeth in. He holds his hand out for her to shake; an amicable parting of the ways.

She shakes her head in contempt and slaps his hand away.

Then she turns on her heel and leaves, trying to process what the hell just happened.

* * *

She's standing in the elevator, staring at the buttons for what may well be the last time when a thought strikes her.

She hits the '4' button, the floor below the Robbery-Homicide division. The Fourth floor is where the Techno Geeks live. If she is, technically speaking, off the force, she may as well get whatever she and Charlie might need to get to the bottom of this thing before she gets barred from the building - unless of course she's arrested at some point in the near future.

_I guess we've got our answer, haven't we, Detective_?

_Who exactly is_ _ **we**_? she wonders as she steps out of the elevator and into Tech Division. She heads straight for a door on the far right of the room, her head tipped down in the hopes that no one recognises her. She gets lucky, and makes it into the small room without incident. There's two computers high on the wall with a waist height desk beneath them. She shuts the door behind her and tugs the cord on the blinds so that no one outside can see in.

Down here they don't need passwords for the employee folders and things like that, she remembers reading Charlie's file in here when she first found out he was assigned to work with her upon his release from jail and passing of the Detective Exams. She walks to the computer and dials Charlie at the same time.

He answers on the second ring - he'd been unhappy about her coming to the station by herself, but she'd insisted it would just be a run of the mill meeting with the new boss.  _Is he ever wrong?_  she thinks to herself, shaking her head wryly.

"Everything okay?" He asks, in lieu of saying 'hello'.

"I'll explain later," she says as she types in 'ELLIS, LIEUTENANT, IAD' into the search parameter boxes.

He's silent for a second, "Everything's not okay." He says quietly. Her search garners only one result, and, she's relieved to see, it's the right one.

"Nice one, Sherlock." She replies absent mindedly as she scrolls down the page, scanning the lines for anything suspicious.

_Lieutenant Harrison Ellis, Graduated Police Academy 1974._

The date tugs at her memory all though she can't think why, so on the second screen she runs a search for all graduating officers the year of 1974. While she waits for it to load she continues scrolling through his file. It all seems on the up and up for the most part, he's had a glittering career with frequent promotions and a tremendous amount of success.

Then she reaches an arrest report - not detailing an arrest he made, but rather an arrest in which  _he_  was the one handcuffed and interviewed and suspected of committing a crime. _What_?

_Lt. Harrison ELLIS was arrested on March 4_ _th_ _1992 for suspected domestic violence (Assault and Battery) against his wife, the victim, Francesca ELLIS._

Below the opening statement is Ellis' full handwritten statement, claiming his wife was lying and he had never so much as raised his voice to her. She notices then that the other screen has finished loading the list of police academy graduates in 1974, so she scrolls down to look for names she recognises.

It doesn't take long. In fact, it's the second name on the list.

_Ames, Carl_.

She blinks, wondering if it's a coincidence.

Then she reads a little further down.

_Davis, Karen_.

"There's no such thing as a coincidence." She says out loud.

"That's true." Agrees Charlie down the phone, making her jump. She'd forgotten she was talking to him. "Everything is connected."

Her eyes flick back across to the screen with Ellis' file displayed on it, and she sees a footnote at the bottom of the statement.

_Charges against Lt. ELLIS were formally dropped by his wife on March 17_ _th_ _1992 after a secondary interview following the statements from character witnesses Sergeant Michael RAYBORN and Captain Jack REESE_.

"What- the fuck?" Dani mutters under her breath. "What  _the fuck_." She says again.

"What's going on, Dani?" Charlie asks flatly as Dani prints off both Ellis' file and the list of Police Academy graduates from 1974.

"How many gaps are there on that wall of yours, Crews?" She asks, thinking on the spot, her mind racing away with her.

"Rayborn, Dunn and your father." He tells her immediately, without having to think about it.

_Rayborn, Reese, Dunn._

"So there's- there's three gaps?" She asks.

_Ames, Davis, Ellis_.

"Yeah- Dani, what is this about?" He's getting tense and impatient now. He didn't want her there by herself in the first place, now she won't tell him what's going on, she's asking him cryptic questions and occasionally muttering expletives under her breath.

"Give me a minute, Charlie." She says, and just for the hell of it, she prints out all of their files too. She knows he already has the files of the three already on the wall, but since he (she's assuming) hadn't considered this line of investigation, so he won't have these. At the last second before she deletes the search, she grabs the IAD report on Bank of LA, realising it's coming up to often not to be important - or at the very least, related.

She pulls a few empty square cut manila folders from the tray hanging beneath the desk and, as fast as she can, puts the groups of freshly printed sheets into each folder.

She's been in here far too long.

She tucks the folders under her arm, deletes the search history and leaves the room.

"I'm coming home." She tells him, realising she's been keeping him hanging for a while. She makes a beeline for the elevators, once again hoping no one she knows recognises her. This time, she's not so lucky.

"Detective Reese, what are you doing down here?" A cheerful voice asks her, and she turns her head in surprise, but doesn't stop walking. His name is Alex, or Alan, or something, he's one of the Tech Officers who work on remotely hacking into suspects computers.

She gestures to the files in her arms, "Just research for a case." She tells him, not entirely lying. She steps into the elevator and hits the button to take her to the basement car lot, only hoping she manages to get out of the building without getting spotted by anyone else who knows her.

* * *

She doesn't have to check, she knows where she'll find him.

She steps into his master closet with the files in her arms.

"Do you want to explain what's going on yet?" He asks, an edge to his voice.

"Sorry, I just- it didn't go how I thought it would and I was kind of on a deadline." She tells him, feeling guilty when she recognises the tightly would set to his shoulders and his rigid posture. He's been worried about her.

"What deadline-" he asks, turning to face her and finding the rest of the words die in his throat when he sees what she's holding. "Are those…?" He trails off, gesturing to them.

"Police files? Yes." She says, setting them down on the top of the dresser.

As soon as the files are out of her arms he steps closer and pulls her into his arms. "You scared the hell out of me." He mutters into her hair as her arms wind around his shoulders and she hugs him back.

"I really am sorry." She tells him, letting herself sink into his embrace for a moment, to enjoy the feeling of closeness that washes over her. She tips her head back and kisses him on the cheek, then smiles.

"I'll start at the beginning," she says casually, "I just quit my job."


	9. Part Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "You quit the LAPD?" He asks anyway and she nods, looking mildly surprised even herself.
> 
> "I haven't quite gotten around to freaking out yet." She admits, and his eyes flick to the police files. She follows his eye line and sighs.
> 
> "Ellis pretty much gave me an ultimatum," she explains, "It was either this," she hesitates, and Charlie's eyes snap back to her, narrowed slightly. "It was either this or I go back to Narcotics."
> 
> "He threatened you?" Charlie deduces, his voice low and hard. He doesn't like people who threaten others for no apparent reason - especially when the person being threatened is Dani.
> 
> "Just you wait," She says with a grim expression, "You're really not going to like him when you see what's in there." She gestures to the files on the dresser.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter comes in two parts, so, as promised: Part Two. I'm aware this probably raises more questions than it answers (sorry) and some of it doesn't make exact... sense? right now, (sorry), but I promise it will - soon. Remember, Charlie and Dani don't really understand a lot of it yet, but in the next few chapters it all becomes very clear what was really going on - I'll try to keep the updates frequent as promised so you aren't left with too many cliffhangers!

_As soon as the files are out of her arms he steps closer and pulls her into his arms. "You scared the hell out of me." He mutters into her hair as her arms wind around his shoulders and she hugs him back._

" _I really am sorry." She tells him, letting herself sink into his embrace for a moment, to enjoy the feeling of closeness that washes over her. She tips her head back and kisses him on the cheek, then steps back._

" _I'll start at the beginning," she says, shrugging out of her jacket, "I just quit my job."_

He stares at her, eyebrows raised, as if waiting for the punch line. When he realises that she obviously isn't joking he flounders for the right thing to say.

"You quit the LAPD?" He asks anyway and she nods, looking mildly surprised even herself.

"I haven't quite gotten around to freaking out yet." She admits, and his eyes flick to the police files. She follows his eye line and sighs.

"Ellis pretty much gave me an ultimatum," she explains, "It was either this," she hesitates, and Charlie's eyes snap back to her, narrowed slightly. "It was either this or I go back to Narcotics."

"He threatened you?" Charlie deduces, his voice low and hard. He doesn't like people who threaten others for no apparent reason - especially when the person being threatened is Dani.

"Just you wait," She says with a grim expression, "You're  _really_  not going to like him when you see what's in there." She gestures to the files on the dresser.

"Then maybe I shouldn't read them, I already want his head on a platter." He tells her darkly, already reaching for the first one. He doesn't open it though. He's too busy thinking about something she said to him on the phone.

"You asked me how many names were on the wall." He reminds her, putting the pieces together, "You think Ellis is something to do with it?" He asks skeptically.

"I know it sounds paranoid, but there was just... just something not right about him." Dani says, shaking her head and reaching for one of the files, opening it, putting it back and then repeating the process until she picks up one with a photo of a grey haired man with slate grey eyes, whom Charlie doesn't recognise, in the top right corner. "So I went down to Tech Division and looked him up."

She flips through a couple of pages then turns the folder round and holds it out to him. "He seemed all legit until I found…" She waves her hand and trails off, letting him read for himself how Ellis was arrested for Assault and Battery on his wife in 1992, but charges were never officially filed.

"Reese and Rayborn vouched for him." Charlie reads, a crease appearing between his eyebrows, "Just like-"

"-They did for Jim Dunn, I know." She says quietly.

His eyes flick up from the pages in Ellis' file, checking on Dani. She's staring over his shoulder, not at a specific photo, but at the wall behind him in general. He watches her in silence, surprised when her eyelids flicker, like she's blinking fast enough to force tears out of her eyes. He holds very still and doesn't say a word, knowing she'll hate him drawing attention to it. Her eyes flick down to the ground and with a short shake of her head to bring her attention back to the matter at hand, she turns back to the files.

"I thought it was weird, but it wasn't until I saw  _this_  that I got suspicious." She says, opening the next file and handing it to him. There's three names circled in red pen;  _Carl Ames, Karen Davis, Harrison Ellis_.

"Ellis graduated with Ames?" He pauses, confused, "Why- what's Davis got to do with this?"

She stares at him for a long moment, biting her lip. "When you went away, you said people thought Stark was dirty too, right?" She tells him, and if her bringing up the past bothers him, he doesn't show it. "But you weren't actually dirty, neither was he, so of course he didn't 'know'." She says, putting air quotes around the last word. He nods in understanding, motioning for her to continue, "But if you were, there's no chance he wouldn't have known, right? I mean, even when we were barely friends we still knew a lot about each other - we were spending nearly twelve hours a day, five days a week together. So, logically speaking, if my father was dirty, what are the chances that Davis didn't know?" She asks, and she watches him digest the information.

"That makes sense," He agrees slowly, "But Davis knowing Reese was dirty and her being in on it…" He trails off and she shrugs.

"I know, it's a reach." She admits, "But last year, when Ames was shot she was fighting so hard to blame you and get you kicked off the force that it seemed like it didn't matter to her whether you were guilty or not."

His eyes flick up to meet hers and his gut tightens with worry. They never did finish their conversation about all this the last time they were in here - they'd gotten side tracked talking about Jim Dunn, and then about Roman Nevikov. He'd never explained any of the things he'd found out before that - so there's some things she still doesn't know.  _She doesn't know that her Father hired the contract killer who shot Ames_ , he reminds himself.

She catches his expression and narrows her eyes at him. "You know something." She says, folding her arms across her chest.

_Rip off the band aid, fast_.

"Ames was killed by a hired gun." He tells her, and she just waits for him to tell her the rest. "He was hired by your father."

Her eyes are trained on the file in her hands. "And then Davis tried to pin it on you." She says quietly.

He's caught off guard by her reaction. It definitely wasn't what he was expecting. He was expecting shouting, a disagreement, a discernible  _reaction_ of some kind. Instead he gets; _Davis tried to pin it on you_. He hears her say it, as if an echo, and he realises she must be flicking through Davis' file.

"So, hypothetically speaking, if you're right, and Ames, Davis and Ellis are the other three, what's the connection?" He asks, turning to face the chart on his wall.

"I don't know how it started," Dani replies, "But what we do know is that they always seem to be covering for each other." She takes the files out of his hands, and takes the remaining ones off the dresser, and kneels down, laying the key documents out on the floor.

"1970; Reese, Dunn and Rayborn graduate from the Academy." She says, laying their photos next to the wall, "1974; Ames, Davis and Ellis graduate the Academy and join the other three on the force." She adds their photos, leaving a space between the two groups, "Sixteen years later, in 1990, Dunn is accused of picking up an underage call girl, but based on a lack of evidence and testimony from Reese and Rayborn, the charges are dropped." She sets Dunn's arrest report and the two statements down on the carpet. "Two years later, in 1992, Ellis is accused of battering his wife. He denies it, Reese and Rayborn give statements and two weeks later, his wife drops the charges." She sets Ellis' arrest report and the two statements down next.

"Two years after that, in 1994, Rayborn finds out what his old buddy Jim Dunn has been up to behind closed doors, and kills him to protect the- the victims, and falls out with my father over it. Even though my Father knows what Rayborn did, he doesn't talk. He lets everyone go on thinking that Dunn was a great guy who couldn't hack it and ate his pistol, and that Rayborn was another ordinary cop, and not a vigilante." He takes the photo from Dunn's funeral off of the wall and passes it to her. She adds it to the growing timeline on the floor, shuffling down the carpet and towards the door to make space.

"Around the same time that all of that goes down, Rayborn sends Reese's informant, Kyle Hollis, to the Seybolt house to attempt to pressure him into getting dirty, to get you dirty." She holds out her hand towards him, and he takes a stuttering breath as he takes Hollis' photo off the wall and hands it to her. He's intimately familiar with the next part of the timeline.

"They kidnap Rachel and have Ames change the report so she's not in it, send Hollis away and frame me." He says, handing her the newspaper clipping from the day he was found guilty; it's his mug shot beside a photo of the blood soaked stairs in the Seybolt house, with the headline ' _PSYCHO_ _KILLER COP GETS LIFE'_. She lays the piece of paper down beside Hollis' mug shot.

"In 2001, Constance Griffiths tries to take my case but-" He swallows forcibly as he takes her photo off the wall and hands it to Dani, "But I turn her away continually until 2002 when she tells me she's already started the ball rolling, and I agree to let her try."

He lets her pick up the story from here. "In 2005 I get kicked out of Narcotics for being a junkie, but my job is saved because Davis vouches for me, and offers to take me on in Robbery/Homicide if I can get clean. In 2007 I've been working for her for just over a year when I get assigned to be your new partner." She writes that part on the back of a sheet from Ellis' file and lays it down. "Early in 2009, Rayborn fakes his own death, once again you're in the spotlight for it. Then Roman finds out and kidnaps me to get to you." She grabs the photo of Rayborn's boat, covered in blood and lays it at the end of the line, then sits back on her heels.

"That's what we do know." She turns to Charlie, finding she's missed doing detective work with him by her side, "What do you see? Or, you know, not see?" She asks him, and he leans forward a little, focusing completely on what's in front of him. Some of this is stuff he's known for almost two years, some of it is new, but it's all laid out in an actual timeline now, and that makes it easier to see the gaps.

"What we don't know," He says, pausing as he stares at the photos of the possible six at the start of the timeline, "Is  _why._ "

She nods slowly, finding herself confused as she stares down at the newspaper clipping from the day Charlie was found guilty, "If you were Rayborn's pet project," she says slowly, and he turns to look at her, "Why would he set you up for a triple murder charge? Get you put away for life without parole?"

"He said he didn't." Charlie remarks absent mindedly, recalling the day Rayborn told him that as he searched for Dani, "He said the Seybolt's weren't supposed to die, and I wasn't supposed to jail, but that it all worked out in the end because it made me  _better_."

Then his eyes narrow, that look he gets when he's had an idea. "What are you thinking?" She asks, following his eye line. He's staring at the two newspaper clippings, side by side.

"He didn't believe you." He comments, and it takes Dani a second to catch up with what he's talking about.

"You said your father didn't believe you when you told him about Dunn, so you went to Rayborn, who killed him to protect you, and then that was when things went bad between the two of them. After Dunn was killed." He says and she finds she's surprised. Surely he's not going with this where she thinks he is?

"And then what, my Father sets you up for murder to- to get  _back_  at him?"

He shakes his head, "Not exactly. So, he gets this call from Hollis - who's high and freaking out and telling him he's just murdered an entire family for not cooperating with Reese and Rayborn's plan. Reese doesn't know what to do, just that he doesn't want to be involved with this, and it's his confidential informant, right? People might start asking questions about why he was there and Hollis is just some dumb twenty-something addict, so if they caught him and offered to cut him a deal he might spill the beans about why he was really there and then Reese and Rayborn and Ellis and anyone else they catch wind of along the way are looking at serious jail time."

Dani nods, understanding that part, just not quite seeing how that equates to specifically framing Charlie.

"So Reese and Rayborn have fallen out, and Reese wants to get back at Rayborn for overstepping because he doesn't believe your story about what happened with Dunn."

Dani blinks at him, finding it's not so much of a stretch when you look at it like that. "So as far as my Father is concerned, Rayborn just killed one of his best friends based on a lie." She says, "Plus, for whatever reason, Rayborn has always seemed to be in charge of all this, and instead of sharing the power, or letting them all help him chose their successor, Rayborn just decides he wants you to be the Prince of the Crime Kingdom, and my Father and Davis and Ellis and Ames want you both out of the way, so they decide to set you up."

Charlie picks up the story, "Ames takes Rachel out of the report so she can't be questioned about what she saw because he owes them something. Then they decide they can't take the risk of her ever remembering what she saw and telling someone, so they steal her from foster care and give her to Hollis to raise. That kind of trauma - being raised by the man who you saw kill your entire family, it would be enough to keep you quiet for years. Ames is the lead investigator, Reese and Davis are both still working in Robbery/Homicide and they help him steer the evidence towards me, and all the while they've got Ellis in IAD rubber stamping everything because, like Ames, he owes them."

They both sit in silence for almost five full minutes, trying to absorb if it's possible. If Charlie really could have spent twelve years in prison based on petty jealousy and a grudge match.

"What I want to know," Dani says after a while, feeling frustrated and out of her depth, "Is what the hell happened between 1974 when they'd all joined the force and 1990 when they start backing each other up for crimes they were supposed to be arresting people for."

"Me, too, honey." Charlie agrees, standing up to grab his phone when it starts ringing, "Me, too."


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lila doesn't reply for a moment, but her heart skips a beat. "E-Evidence? For what?" She asks.
> 
> Dani hears the anxious tone of her voice and her head snaps up. It's the tone of someone who knows something, but keeps quiet to protect someone they care about. She hears it all the time from the loved ones of suspects on the run.
> 
> She stares at her Mom for a long, tense moment, then decides she must be imagining it. It sounds paranoid, even to her, that her Mom could be in on all this as well.
> 
> Maybe she's not in on it, her mind reminds her, maybe she just knew what was going on.
> 
> The Cop part of her brain reminds her that that's also known as 'Guilt by Association'.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> After the last couple chapters this story is gathering steam now - I'm not sure exactly how many chapters it's going to finish up being, but I can tell you things are going to start happening faster now. I hope you enjoy! Oh, and if you were wondering, the call Charlie received at the end of the last chapter was Rachel, telling him she was at the airport (it was supposed to be a different phone call so I put it at the end to be ~dramatic and then I finished this chapter and put the actual call in this one instead).

"What are you doing in here?" Lila asks, leaning on the door frame of Jack's office with her arms folded across her chest.

Dani looks up and finds herself transported back to ten years ago when she was a teenager getting caught poking around in her Dad's office, and for a second, she fishes for a lie - then she remembers that she isn't actually sixteen anymore, and her Mom can't ground her for sneaking into her Father's office.

"I'm looking for something." She says, turning back to the open middle drawer in the desk in front of her.

" _Chi_?" She asks curiously,  _What_?

There's very little surprise in her tone - it's by no means the first time Lila has caught her daughter doing something she wasn't supposed to be, and it's definitely not the first time she's caught her in her Father's office. Once Dani had reached the age where she was old enough to start actively disagreeing with her Father, she'd started attempting to find ways to piss him off just for the sake of it - a rebellion that many a shrink has told her was the underlying cause for her drug problem.

"I don't know yet," Dani replies, not really paying attention to her Mom, "Evidence."

Lila doesn't reply for a moment, but her heart skips a beat. "E-Evidence? For what?" She asks.

Dani hears the anxious tone of her voice and her head snaps up. It's the tone of someone who knows something, but keeps quiet to protect someone they care about. She hears it all the time from the loved ones of suspects on the run.

She stares at her Mom for a long, tense moment, then decides she must be imagining it. It sounds paranoid, even to her, that her Mom could be in on all this as well.

_Maybe she's not in on it,_  her mind reminds her,  _maybe she just knew what was going on_.

The Cop part of her brain reminds her that that's also known as 'Guilt by Association'.

She shakes her head a little, trying to get rid of the thoughts and looks back down into the drawer. She was telling the truth before - she's in here looking for something, she's just not sure what. She knows what she  _wants_  to find - something, anything, which explains this whole mess - something which makes it less of a conspiracy than it appears to be.

She knows they don't know the whole story yet, but what they've already found is bad enough - if she's being honest, she's afraid of what  _else_  they're going to find; of how much worse this could potentially get.

She finds the manila envelope that she knows holds the photos of her father arguing with Carl Ames just a few weeks before he had him killed - assuming he did that to keep Ames quiet about whatever it was they were all involved with, then hiring someone to shoot him  _inside_  the LAPD building was just about the strongest message he could possibly send to anyone else thinking of following Ames' lead, and a sure fire way to keep them quiet.

_Rayborn, Reese, Dunn. Ames, Ellis, Davis_.

The names circle through her head like a mantra, over and over again as she tries to figure out the link - the link that they would all kill, die and send an innocent man to prison to protect.

"Why are you looking for evidence if you quit your job? Why are you looking for evidence in your Father's office at all?" Lila asks - and this time there's no mistaking the nerves in her voice.

Dani stands up from where she's crouching behind the desk so she can see her Mom better.

"Do you know something?" She asks, hoping the answer is a resounding 'no'. Even if she does, it's not like Dani's going to turn her in to the Cops, but still, it would be nice to know her _entire_  childhood wasn't just one big lie - that there's someone innocent and law abiding in her family.

"I-" Lila hesitates and shakes her head like she's searching for the right thing to say, eventually she settles on (if a little desperately) "He's not a bad person."

"What do you know?" Dani asks wearily, deciding she needs to go on vacation for about a month when all of this is over - because make no mistake, it  _will_  be over. Dani is sick as hell of being in the dark about everything, and she's determined not to turn a blind eye anymore. She supposes she has Charlie to thank for that. She has Charlie to thank for a lot of things.

"No details or anything," Lila says, taking a step into the office, "Just snippets. Sometimes it would get too much for him and he'd breakdown and tell me things - but he made me swear I'd never tell a soul - and I haven't."

"Who else knows?" Dani asks, folding her arms across her chest over the manila folder.

"I don't know- Karen, probably; maybe your Father's old friend Mickey? I don't know." She says, biting her lip.

_Reese, Davis, Rayborn_.

"Please just tell me what you know, Maamaan."

Her Mother flinches at Dani's use of Farsi in Jack's office. It's a flagrant disobedience of the rules that have been beaten into them both, and it serves as a startling reminder to Lila that her husband hasn't set foot inside this office, or indeed in this  _house_  for almost a year now. Which is, of course, exactly what Dani meant it to do.

"There was a woman," Lila starts, "I think her name was… Sophie? No- S…S-Stacy. Stacy Primrose."

"Dad had an affair?" Dani asks, not sure why she's surprised - he didn't exactly worry about breaking the vows he swore for the job, so why would he worry about marriage vows?

"No, no, God, no. Nothing like that." Lila insists, shaking her head and looking down at a photo of her and Jack that sits on his desk. It's from their wedding day more than thirty years ago now. "No, Stacy was a friend of Mickey's. I think they were dating."

Dani nods and motions for her to continue, "I don't know what happened. He brought her over here a few times when we had people from the force over for barbeques. Then one day he told me they'd broken up and she wasn't going to be coming around here anymore." She picks up the photo and stares at it almost longingly - wondering how the present she's living in could be so different from the future she'd imagined as a young woman on her wedding day - the future Jack had promised her. "Nothing was the same after that."

Dani blinks then shakes her head. "That's it? Rayborn got his heart broken and  _Dad_  turned into a monster?" She asks, feeling indignant and short changed.  _That can't be it_ , she thinks to herself,  _there has to be more to it than that_.

"Like I said, I don't know." Lila shrugs, "I learnt early on with your father never to ask questions."

"Did you know he sent Charlie to prison for a crime he didn't commit?" Dani asks quietly, gathering steam, "Did you know he covered for criminals and felons on the force because they were  _friends_? Did you know that he had his friend  _murdered_ in a parking garage to keep him quiet about something he was involved with?!" Dani asks, throwing the manila envelope onto the desk. Photos of Jack and Ames arguing spill out like a waterfall, some cascading off the side and falling to the floor. There's one other thing she could ask her mother -  _did you know he lied to protect the man who hurt me for more than two years?_  But she doesn't. It's a very carefully orchestrated balance they have, and she's more frightened of the answer than she is of anything she might find out in this whole conspiracy mess.

"I knew he sent someone to jail who didn't deserve it. He said that someone had found out about something they'd done - something illegal, so they had to keep him quiet to protect their families from the fallout. I- I just assumed they'd made some kind of mistake and were afraid of the consequences."

She stares at her Mother uncomprehendingly.

_Someone had found out about something they'd done, so they had to keep him quiet._

Her eyes flick down to the photos of her father arguing with Ames, still scattered across the desk and the floor - photos taken by Charlie.

_What do you know_? She wonders,  _do you even know that you know it?_

She looks up, intending on asking her mother if she knows anything else, but Lila has a faraway look in her eye and she's slowly mouthing something to herself, like she's counting or trying to remember something.

"What?" She asks, feeling nervous and impatient.

"It was all- It was all around the same time." Lila says, still not looking at her.

"What was?" Dani asks as Lila sets the photo of herself and Jack that she'd been holding, back down onto the desk.

"Stacy left and someone went to jail and… Jack changed. They all did." It's the only explanation her Mother offers her, and she'd dig for more but her phone starts ringing. She fishes it out of her pocket and the caller ID tells her it's Charlie, so instead of ignoring it to finish this conversation, she answers it.

"Hey." She says, bending down to start picking up the photos.

"In '84 Ames got caught with a hipflask of whiskey in his desk." Charlie says without preamble, "And you're never gonna guess who made it go away."

"Reese and Rayborn." She guesses, tucking the phone between her shoulder and her ear as she slides the photos back into the manila envelope.

"Right - and who do you think the investigating IAD officer was?" He asks, knowing she knows the answer.

"Ellis?" She answers, standing up. She can feel her Mom's eyes on her as she lists names Lila recognises.

"Bingo." He replies.

"So that's what Ames owed them; he gets caught drinking on the job and the others vouch for him because they're all such good buddies." Dani says, "Then he owes them so he keeps doing them favours."

"Exactly - I think it was the first thing they did." He tells her, and she can hear him flicking through pages in the background, "But that still doesn't tell us how they went from having someone's back and protecting them from losing their job over a mistake to defending and covering for two felons."

"No, it does not." Dani agrees, and she considers telling him what her mother has told her, but she quickly decides against that idea. A) It's not a conversation she wants to have in front of her Mom; and B) She's not exactly sure what her Mom  _did_  tell her. It's certainly given her a lot to think about though.

The house phone rings in the kitchen and her mother points to the door way, mouthing "I'll be right back." As she leaves. Dani nods and sits down in her father's chair for better access to the drawers. There's only a few more she needs to search then she's looked everywhere.

"I got Rachel," He tells her cautiously, and the tension in his voice stops her in her tracks. She sits up straighter.

"What happened?" She asks, picturing varying worst case scenarios, each more dramatic than the last.

"Rachel isn't alone." He tells her, his voice grim.

"Who's she with?" She asks, and then hears a splash and a laugh on the other end of the line.

"A guy." He says shortly.

"A guy?" Dani asks, not understanding the tightness in his voice - until she suddenly does. "You mean like, a  _boyfriend_  type guy?"

"Yup. A six-foot-tall, hunky,  _Italian_  guy named Francesco Pascal. Who calls her  _Bella_." He does an only mildly awful impersonation of an Italian accent and Dani laughs.

"He sounds like someone I want to meet." She says with a smirk, just to wind him up.

" _He's wearing a Speedo_." He whines, sounding simultaneously like a little kid and an anxious parent, and it just makes her laugh more.

"She's what, 20, 21 now? I'm sure she can handle herself - and judging from the fact that I can hear them laughing from the other end of a  _phone line_ , you're spying on her close enough to be sure that if the kid tries anything you'll shoot him in the nuts." She tells him sarcastically.

"Hey, I'm not  _spying,_  I'm just watching over her protectively to-" The rest of his sentence is drowned out by a desperate scream coming from the kitchen.

"Dani? Are you okay?" He asks immediately, his voice filled with panic.

"It's not me, it's my Mom." She says immediately, jumping out of her chair and racing into the kitchen; where she finds her mother with tears rolling down her face, clutching the phone in one hand and the phone cradle on the wall in the other, like she's using it to hold herself up. "What's wrong? What happened?"

She doesn't get any response from her Mother, who's speaking in rapid Farsi down the phone, intercut with cries that make Dani's stomach hurt.

"Motavajjeh nemisham! Nakheyr! _Motavajjeh nemisham!_ " Lila says brokenly,  _I don't understand!_

"What the hell is going on?" Charlie asks, and, recalling the last time she left him hanging on the phone and scared him half to death she says shortly, "I don't know. Someone called my Mom and now she's sobbing."

She puts her hand on the phone and takes it from her mother, who lets it go easily, then turns so her back is to the wall and slides to the floor like a puppet who's strings have been cut. Then she buries her face in her hands and cries like someone's just told her the world is ending.

"Who the fuck is this?" Dani snaps into the receiver, "And what the hell did you say to my Mother?"

"Detective Reese," Ellis' voice is somehow even slimier over the phone, and the pieces fall into place  _Mom's sobbing, someone from the force called,_ just before he tells her what happened. "I'm sorry to tell you that Jack Reese's body was found this morning." To give him credit, he actually does sound sorry, but apparently almost everyone she's ever known is a liar, so she doesn't give him  _much_  credit for what is probably just a performance.

She swallows forcefully and forces the cop side of her to overtake the emotional side. She doesn't know how she feels yet, and she needs to keep it that way so she can be strong for her Mom.

"What happened?" She asks, turning the volume down on the receiver in case her Mom hears.

"He was butchered." Ellis tells her bluntly, "Each piece was buried in a different grave and we've found about two thirds of him so far. We had to use dental records for the ID."

The room swims around her and she thanks her lucky stars that she or her Mom aren't the ones having to go down to the station and ID Jack's body. She might hate the guy but seeing him in pieces…

"Dani?" Charlie's voice, patient and steady in her ear wrenches her back - but it doesn't get rid of the mental images.

"Thanks for calling, Ellis. Anything else you have to say goes through me, okay? No more calls to my mother." She demands, then hangs up the phone without giving him time to reply.

"They found Jack's body," she tells Charlie, "I wouldn't tell Rachel just yet though."

"That bad?" He asks, and she reaches for the edge of the kitchen table to steady herself, wishing he was here.

"Worse."


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Is it uh, is it wise to cook without a shirt on?" Charlie asks, trying to figure out the nice way to tell the guy to put on a fucking shirt for the love of god without getting yelled at by Rachel.
> 
> "Yes." Rachel and Dani say at the exact same time - then they make eye contact with each other and honest to god giggle.
> 
> Dani Reese is giggling in his kitchen over his not-niece's boyfriend.
> 
> He feels like he must be trapped in some kind of bizarre alternate reality.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, a little light heartedness and fluff to serve as a breather between the angsty stuff from the last few chapters and (I think) the next few chapters. I'm sorry that this is perhaps a little bit of a filler, but I think it was necarssary for the next parts of the story.

Dani ends up staying at her Mom's house until a little before one in the morning, when Lila finally convinces her that she's honestly okay now, she just wants to go to bed.

She's only five minutes away from her place, so she drops by and picks up some extra clothes to take back ho- back to  _Charlie's_. She has basic toiletries over there; toothbrush, toothpaste, razor, shampoo and conditioner, but she adds extras like her face cream and her body butter and her vast collection of make-up and nail varnishes (read:  _limited_  array), and then after that adds in her favorite comfy sweats for good measure. She almost adds her slouchy old Police Academy sweatshirt, but then doesn't bother. If she wants a too-big cosy sweater, she'll just steal one of Charlie's.

_Jesus, when did we get so domestic and comfortable_? She wonders to herself as she adds a few last minute items to her bag and heads out the door. She can't even remember the last time she went grocery shopping for her own place. Whenever she buys food she just automatically puts it in Charlie's kitchen, like a habit, and she hasn't slept in her own bed in weeks.

She pauses with her hand on the handle of the trunk of her car.

_Are we… **living together**?_

She throws the bag in the trunk and then climbs into the driver's seat, then drives- then drives  _home_  as if on autopilot, forcing herself not to wonder if the crime scene techs have found all the pieces of her father yet.

* * *

When she walks through the door she tries to keep quiet, assuming that Rachel and her boyfriend will have crashed from the time difference by now - she's guessing, on account of the so-called "hunky" Italian, Rachel was in Europe - and she doesn't want to wake them up.

Charlie hasn't gone to bed. He's stayed up waiting for her, making sure she was doing okay. It's a really, really fucking terrifying thing, outliving your parents. It's supposed to happen like that, of course it is, it's just the natural order of things - but that doesn't make it any less bizarre when it happens.

Although, that being said, his experience of losing his mother and her experience of losing her father will be vastly different things. He and his mother may not have seen eye to eye about  _every_  little thing, but as far as he's concerned, she was an angel and he adored her. Jack Reese - and his relationship with his daughter - is a whole different story.

She dumps her bag on the floor at the back of the couch ( _don't smile, that's not appropriate, someone just died_ ) and then stands still in the middle of the living room looking completely and utterly lost. He stands up from his chair at the kitchen counter and walks slowly towards her not wanting to startle her. As soon as she sees him she walks to him too, and without protest, lets him bundle her into his arms.

"I'm sorry." He tells her honestly. His personal feelings for the man aside, he was still Dani's father - and no matter how much you hate your parents, there's always a part of you that's eight years old and screaming for their love and attention on the inside.

"I don't know how I feel." She mumbles into his shoulder. His hands stroke a slow, soothing pattern up and down her back and he kisses the top of her head.

"I don't think you're supposed to." He assures her, and he feels her nod against his chest.

"Do you want me to heat up the left over Chinese food, or do you want to just go to bed?" He asks softly. It's not much, but it's the best he's got under the circumstances.

She pauses, thinking and then looks up at him and says hopefully, "We could heat up the left over Chinese food then eat it  _in_  bed?"

He can't help it. He grins at her. "You're my dream girl." He tells her admiringly, pleased that he's managed to coax a smile out of her at last.

"Don't you forget it." She tells him, with a passable imitation of her usual sass that tells him that things are going to be okay, maybe not right away, but at some point, they  _will_  be.

* * *

They're sitting in bed in sweats, stealing bites of left over Chinese take-out from each other's plates and it's domestic and comfortable and god, he loves her so much he's not sure there's space for it all in his body.

After a while she pauses with her chopsticks half way to her mouth (he sticks to a fork after several noodles-and-sauce based disasters that had taken so long to clean up Ted had virtually banned them from the house) and looks up at him with a strange expression on her face.

"My Mom said something weird while I was over there today." She says, resting her plate on her knee, "I- I asked her if she knew Dad was part of something that landed you in prison, and she said-" Dani pauses shaking her head, "She said she knew he sent someone to jail who didn't deserve it because they'd found out about something ' _they_ ' had done."

"And you think I know something." He surmises, swilling it round in his mind.

"Do you?" She asks skeptically, "I mean, is it possible you stumbled across something without even knowing it?"

He narrows his eyes and looks away, deep in thought. "If I knew something, wouldn't I know that I knew it?" He asks and she shoots him one of those  _don't start with the talking in circles_  looks, and he rolls his eyes with a self-deprecating smile. "You know what I mean. If it was something serious enough that they'd fit me up for a  _triple_  life sentence it had to have been something big, right? Something that I would  _know_  that I knew."

She nods slowly, hating that it seems the more they find, the less they seem to know.

"She said it was something illegal, so they sent someone away to keep him quiet and 'protect their families from the fallout'."

He stares at her for a moment. "You keep saying 'someone' not 'you'." He observes, and she sighs, shaking her head.

"I just- it doesn't add up. Like you said, how could you know something and not know that you knew it?" She asks, and it's mostly just rhetorical. He doesn't know either.

"You think they might have done this before - set someone up." He states flatly and she shrugs.

"I don't know anything anymore." She tells him, and this is the part he understands.

Her faith in the force - in the job that she'd once taken so much pride in, is gone. It's something he went through a decade ago in prison, and it's something she's trying to come to terms with now - how she could possibly have been so wrong, so blind that she didn't see the awfulness that was happening right under her nose. In her case - in her own home.

A little while later, when the food is finished and they are, for lack of a better term, spooning, she turns over in his arms so that they're facing each other, and gently cups her hand around his cheek.

For a second she seems to struggle with finding the right words, but she settles on keeping it simple. "I love you." She tells him. There's a stunned, slightly awestruck expression on his face, and he just manages to catch the words  _marry me_  before he says them ( _she'd probably freak out and never talk to you again and that's a best case scenario_ ) and instead says, "I love you, too."

Then he kisses her and neither of them say much at all for a while.

* * *

When Charlie and Dani walk into the kitchen the next morning they find Rachel and her boyfriend already there. Rachel is sat at the counter, her chin propped on her hands with a dreamy look on her face while she watches him glide around the kitchen making breakfast. He's wearing sweats and no shirt with a tea towel thrown over his shoulder, displaying a tanned and toned torso, narrow hips and broad shoulders - and then he turns around from the oven holding a tray and the guy has a freaking  _six pack_. Charlie finds himself wishing Ted was here so he didn't have to endure this alone.

"Is it uh, is it wise to cook without a shirt on?" Charlie asks, trying to figure out the nice way to tell the guy to  _put on a fucking shirt for the love of god_  without getting yelled at by Rachel.

"Yes." Rachel and Dani say at the exact same time - then they make eye contact with each other and honest to god  _giggle_.

Dani Reese is giggling in his kitchen over his not-niece's boyfriend.

He feels like he must be trapped in some kind of bizarre alternate reality.

The guy looks up from where he's taking round pastries off of the tray and smiles at Dani, displaying ( _of course_ ) two rows of perfectly straight, pearly white teeth.

"Ah, you must be Mr. Crews' wife! Daniella, no? My name is Francesco." he steps out from behind the counter, takes Dani's hand and drops a feather light kiss across her knuckles.

Don't get Dani wrong, she's happily in love with Charlie and has absolutely no plans to ever change that, but  _holy hell that accent_.

"I- just Dani, is fine." She says, looking equal parts charmed and freaked out, "And I'm not his-"

"Your wife is very beautiful, Mr. Crews." He says, ignoring her denial, and Dani looks over at Charlie in time to see him grin.

"She is, isn't she?" He says, sliding his arm around her waist.

"We are not married!" Dani protests, hitting Charlie across the chest and then rolling her eyes and  _absolutely not_ blushing when he leans down and whispers in her ear, "Yet."

"Are you done flirting with Charlie's girlfriend yet, or?" Rachel asks, raising one eyebrow. Francesco crosses the kitchen and cups her face in his hands.

"You know I only have eyes for you,  _amore mio_." He tells her with a smile, then leans down and kisses her. And kisses her. And keeps on kissing her.

Dani turns to look at Charlie, who's staring at the two of them with narrowed eyes and his mouth half open. Then Dani remembers Charlie's known her since she was a baby and she feels a little sorry for him.

"Hey, so, what's for breakfast?" She says loudly, "It smells great."

Rachel and Francesco break apart and Charlie's eyes snap to her. He mouths 'thank you…' at her and she just rolls her eyes at him.

"So- breakfast?" Rachel says, a little breathlessly.

"Right, yes. I hope you like Brioche." Francesco says without missing a beat, missing the glare Charlie is shooting at his back - and therefore also the glare Rachel shoots at Charlie.

"I thought Brioche was French?" Charlie says, raising his eyebrows.

"But the language of food, it is universal, no?" The guy looks so goddamn sincere that Rachel and Dani are practically swooning. He turns to the fridge to grab the orange juice and to hide the fact that he's rolling his eyes and gagging just a little - and trying to work out at exactly which point his life had become a bad sitcom.

* * *

"So I've been thinking-" Charlie starts as he steps into the closet where Dani's currently getting dressed.

"I thought I could smell burning." Dani remarks, and it's testament only to his rather extraordinary self restraint that he focuses on the insult rather than the fact that his girlfriend is standing in his closet in her underwear.

"Fine, if you don't want to hear my brilliant idea…" He trails off, smiling because he knows she's going to roll her eyes at him and then make him tell her.

As predicted, Dani rolls her eyes and then turns to face him with her arms folded across her chest. "No, please, tell me your brilliant idea." She says in a monotone voice. Some things never change. Except for how she always smiles now, when she says stuff like that.

"Okay, so I was thinking that maybe the answer to all of this might be in one of the cases one or all of them worked together." He watches her mull the idea over in her mind.

"That's a sixteen year window." She points out, reaching for a dark blue v-neck t-shirt and pulling it over her head.

"I know," he agrees ruefully, "It'll take forever, but it's the only thing I've come up with."

"It's a valid idea for sure, but I'm seeing a small problem." She tells him as she pulls on a pair of her jeans.

"How are we going to get access to the files when you're off the force and I'm sort-of-halfway-mostly-off the force?" He guesses and she nods.

"Plus, sixteen years is a hell of a long time in terms of cases; they must have worked hundreds - if not thousands - between the six of them in that time." She points out.

It's a hopelessly monumental task, and she's pretty sure she doesn't have the stomach nor the patience for it.

"Okay, so how would we go about narrowing it down?" He asks, mostly hypothetically. There isn't really a whole host of ways to narrow the field here.

Dani pauses, and then as if without thinking about it pulls his green hoodie off of the shelf in front of her and pulls it on. He grins, deciding she seems to look better in his clothes than he does.

The two of them are walking down the stairs to the kitchen when Dani says, "We could try going through the files we already have" she suggests, thinking six files is a better starting point than  _sixteen years_  worth of files, "We've got their personnel files, and it's not like we've trawled through them in that much detail yet, so why don't we read through them and see what we find?"

"It's worth a shot." Charlie agrees, and they're standing by the open kitchen window when he realises Rachel and Francesco are in the pool together. He feels like he should probably get blinds or something on account of how much he's seen of them both in the last couple of days since they arrived.

"We should get some more of the weed." Francesco says to Rachel in his mostly fluent but still slightly stilted English.

"Does he know we're sort-of-cops?" Charlie asks with an extreme dose of exasperation at the same time as Rachel says, "You do remember my Uncle's a cop, right? I told you twice on the plane." She pauses, "His girlfriend's a cop too, and we are  _not_  smoking weed in their house, okay?"

Charlie can't help the smile that appears on his face when she refers to him as her Uncle. The last time she called him that was before he went to prison.

"She's a good kid." Charlie says absently, and Dani smiles a little ruefully.

"She's doing better than I was at her age." She remarks in agreement.

She doesn't know much - if anything at all really - about Rachel Seybolt, beyond the fact that Charlie went to extremes to save her - and that the person she needed saving from was Dani's own father. At some point they're going to have to tell her what happened to him, and it's one conversation Dani already knows that Rachel and Charlie will be best left alone for - one of the few scenarios where she and Charlie working together is a bad idea.

"Come on," She tells him, turning away from the window and taking his hand, "We've got work to do."


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As it happens, it takes her two coffees, two files and one hour to make her first breakthrough. She's reading through Davis' file when she stumbles across it, and at first, she dismisses it, not thinking it important enough to be of any relevance - mostly because the part that's actually relevant is buried within several paragraphs of a report.
> 
> The report tells her that Davis had shot and killed an armed murder suspect in January 1985 named Clive Wellard while she in the process of attempting to arrest both Wellard and his accused accomplice, Peter Jackson.
> 
> She wouldn't even consider it relevant if it wasn't for the name of Wellard and Jackson's supposed victim.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry about the late update again, I had to redo a few things because I noticed I was on the verge of writing myself into a ginormous plot hole with no way out. So. Fixed it. I think...I hope.

As luck would have it - and in this scenario, Dani means an extreme  _lack_  of luck - Ted calls Charlie just half an hour after they've started looking through the files Dani had managed to steal from the station in the days before.

"I know, I know, I owe you one." He attempts to placate her once he's told her he needs to  _"Run out for a bit"_. By  _"Run out for a bit_ " He means,  _"Drive to LAX, wait for Ted and Olivia to clear customs and baggage control and then drive them back here_.". She sort of wants to throttle both Charlie  _and_  Ted right about now as she surveys the ocean of pages spread out in front of her.

"One? Oh, you owe me at least a dozen for this." She corrects him immediately. Depending on traffic he's going to be gone for at least two to three hours; which is going to feel like _months_  when her work load has just doubled.

"I am yours to command." He promises her with a silly grin as he leans down to kiss her.

"Well, that sounds like fun." Dani concedes with a smirk, but turns her head away at the last second so his lips brush her cheek instead of her lips.

"I'm in trouble, aren't I." He sighs dramatically, straightening up.

"Like you wouldn't believe, Crews." She agrees, turning back to the pages of Ames' file in front of her, "Like you wouldn't believe."

"I love you?" He tries hopefully from the doorway, and she doesn't quite catch the smile that spreads across her face before he sees it.

"I love you, too." She replies quietly, just before he shuts the door and heads out, smiling like she is.

* * *

As it happens, it takes her two coffees, two files and one hour to make her first breakthrough. She's reading through Davis' file when she stumbles across it, and at first, she dismisses it, not thinking it important enough to be of any relevance - mostly because the part that's actually relevant is buried within several paragraphs of a report.

The report tells her that Davis had shot and killed an armed murder suspect in January 1985 named Clive Wellard while she in the process of attempting to arrest both Wellard and his accused accomplice, Peter Jackson.

She wouldn't even consider it relevant if it wasn't for the name of Wellard and Jackson's supposed victim. The woman's name was Stacy Primrose - the same name her mother had given her when talking about the time things had changed in her father and the others.

What was it she'd said? Something like;

 _It all happened around the same time. Stacy went away and someone went to jail and everything changed after that_.

Dani blinks in confusion, making sure she's reading everything right. According to this, Stacy Primrose was murdered in 1984 - the only information given in the report she has access to states that she died of a "cerebral contusion", also known as an extreme head wound which is fatal more often than not. In 1984 Charlie wasn't a cop - he was barely even a legal adult, and he wasn't sent to prison until a whole ten years later. The report states that Peter Jackson was arrested by Davis' partner Jack Reese. Who, surprise sur-fucking-prise, vouched for Davis during the IAD investigation into the shooting.

There's more to this, she knows there is - she's just not seeing it right.  _There's more to this_.

What she needs is access to the LAPD database she used to get these files in the first place. She needs whatever files and records they have on Stacy Primrose and her murder because whoever the hell she is, she's apparently at the centre of this whole mess.

Her eyes trail over the name of the man who was apparently convicted for her murder, and she pauses, deep in thought.

 _Peter Jackson_.

She can't go back into the department and look him up, so she'll have to do the next best thing.

She powers up Charlie's laptop - which she understands he only owns because Ted insisted upon it - and once it's loaded she punches Jackson's name into Google. The first few results seem to be about some actor she's never heard of, but then, near to the bottom of the page, is a link titled "Top 10 Brutal One Off Murders Of The 80's!", the web address underneath listed as murderandthemacabre . com.

Normally she fucking hates these websites, run by psychotic fans of killers and other sadists - but today she wonders if it might not be useful for her.

Peter Jackson is listed as number nine, above the woman who shot her father's second wife while she was doing yoga in the garden and below the man who strangled his brother until his eyes popped out for sleeping with his fiancé. It doesn't say much about the crime, just that Jackson had broken into Stacy Primrose's home with his best friend Clive Wellard, and they'd planned to kill her for cheating on Wellard. Jackson had beaten her and then Wellard had caved her head in with a "large, blunt object". After Wellard was shot by a cop a month later, Jackson was arrested and for his part in the crime, charged with first degree murder. The only problem seemed to be that he'd ultimately pled guilty and confessed to the crime - definitely not the act of an innocent man.

The last sentence of the brief article states that  _Peter Jackson is serving out his life sentence in California State Prison after being transferred out of the infamous Pelican Bay State Prison for so-called "undisclosed reasons"._

It's the same prison where, on Charlie's first days back on the job, he'd told her that the universe makes fun of us all because of its own insecurity - where Charlie's fearsome reputation had spread without him even spending any time there.

Her eyes flick to the clock.

_If I leave now, I could make it back before him still._

It's got  _bad idea_  written all over it, to go and visit a convicted murderer based on nothing but gut instinct and a suspicion that things don't quite add up, but she can't shake the feeling that it's a visit she needs to make.

She also knows how protective Charlie is of her, and that sticking two alpha males like she knows Charlie is and she's assuming this Jackson character is, in a room together is a bad idea when she just wants whatever information he can give her. Plus, it'll probably be easier if they draw as little attention to themselves as possible - and taking him with her would do nothing  _but_  attract stares and raise questions.

 _If I leave now, I could make it back before him still_.

* * *

"Name?" The bored looking Prison Clerk asks her, and her right hand twitches towards her belt where her Police Detective badge used to sit. Not anymore. There's nothing official about her visit - in fact, it's probably for the best that no one finds out she was ever even here, and since she hasn't really had anything to do with this prison over her years in the department, she doesn't imagine anyone will recognise her.

"Hello?" The woman asks, raising her eyebrows at Dani, "What's your name?" She enunciates the words slowly, as if Dani's too stupid to understand.

 _Not Reese. Anything, just say something_ -

"Crews." She blurts, and her brain flounders for dry land for a second  _oh hell, I've said it now_ , before she stumbles out, "D-Dani Crews." Surely there's other people in Los Angeles with that name. The woman won't put two and two together. Right?

"And who are you here to visit, Mrs. Crews?" The woman asks, assuming she's married. She isn't, of course, not in the legal sense of the word at least.

"Peter Jackson." She says, trying to slow her heart rate down. She worked undercover for years and yet for some ridiculous reason lying her way into a prison is making her anxious as hell. She doesn't let it show though - she's always had a killer poker face.

"Is this your first time visiting him?" She asks and Dani nods.

The woman taps on her keyboard for a few seconds then nods.

"What is your relationship with the inmate?"

"I'm-" she hesitates, then eventually says, "My father was a friend of his."

 _My father put him in here and I'm not sure if he's really guilty or not_.

She immediately chastises herself for the last part of that thought.  _You're being paranoid. He confessed and pled guilty, of course he did it_.

Right?

* * *

"It's good to see you, Charlie." Ted says, slapping his friend on the back when they hug each other briefly in the arrivals hall.

"You too, Ted." Charlie agrees before turning to Olivia.

"Hi." She says, wearing a bashful smile.

"I'm glad you didn't marry my father." He tells her, and she blinks at him in surprise.

"I- oh. Me, too." She replies, then her eyes flick to Ted and they both smile as they start walking back to the car lot, hands clasped between them.

Charlie realises abruptly that he's now going to be living with  _two_  newly in love couples - he's selectively ignoring the fact that he and Dani are a newly in love couple based on the fact that a) they keep the public displays of affection to a minimum (he's kidding himself) and b) they don't really count as "newly in love" when they've both been harboring feelings for each other since before they were even together (he's not wrong) and c) neither he nor Dani is a twenty year old girl like Rachel (of which he is unbelievably thankful).

They head out to the car (Charlie decided to take Ted's car to be sure they'd be able to fit all their luggage in the trunk) and Charlie helps Ted load up the trunk with the few cases he and Olivia had accumulated during their stay in Spain. It's been a couple of weeks since they'd last spoken, and they're both keen to catch up on what they've missed.

"How did that lawyer work out?" Ted asks as Charlie closes the trunk lid and the three of them climb into his car.

"I'm still suspended, and Dani's not a cop anymore." He tells him succinctly as he pulls out of the car park. "Speaking of Dani, she lives with me now."

Ted blinks at him rapidly, "Dani as in Dani  _Reese_  lives in your house?" He splutters and Charlie grins.

"Yep. I almost proposed the other day but then I remembered she'd probably punch me so I didn't." Charlie's delivery of the information is so blasé that Ted finds he's speechless and Olivia can't help it. She  _aww_ s. Then promptly slaps her hand over her mouth when Charlie's eyes flick up to look at her in the rear view mirror.

"Sorry," She says with a bashful smile, "But that's really cute."

* * *

She walks into the visitors room and chooses one of the partitions in the far corner. She doesn't want their following conversation to be overheard - she and Charlie still have no idea how deep rooted this conspiracy seemed to be within the LAPD, correctional facilities across California and the other departments the LAPD is connected to.

She sits down and doesn't have to wait long before a stocky white guy with a couple days worth of stubble on his cheeks and black hair with a little salt at his temples shuffles in. He looks disinterested, old and haggard - and not the kind of person you can get an instant read off of. Some people, you can tell right from the get-go whether they're a killer or not, others; like Jackson, are harder to pin down. Besides, even if he  _was_  innocent when he went inside, in all likelihood, he probably isn't now. If getting to know Charlie has taught her anything, it's that no one leaves prison the same person they were when they went in. That person might still be buried deep inside you somewhere, but most inmates lock that part of themselves away, deep down within themselves to protect it from being burned alive by daily life on the inside.

He's led down the row by a guard and sat down in front of her, his hands still cuffed at the wrists. His eyebrows scrunch together as he tries to figure out if he knows the woman sat in front of him, and she steels her nerves feeling just a little shocked she's really doing this based on a gut feeling.

She curls her hands into fists where they rest on her thighs, then releases the tension from them, making sure they're steady when she reaches up and takes the phone receiver off of the hook. He follows suit, still looking completely and utterly confused - and more than a little suspicious.

"Are you one of the pretty ones who likes to send me letters?" He asks, and his voice is just as sleazy sounding as she had expected - but it doesn't sound natural. He sounds like he's sizing her up; like he's testing her.

"Are you Peter Jackson?" She asks, wanting to be sure there's no mistake before she goes down this road.

"You know I am," He replies tersely, "Who the hell are you?"

"That's not important right now." She tells him - she knows she can't give him the name she gave the guard in the reception area, there's too much chance he knows who Charlie is through the prison legend grapevine, and she can't give him her real name without tipping him off who her father is. "You originally pled innocent to the murder of Stacy Primrose."

"Didn't wanna go to prison." His expression is filled with so much hate and disgust that she's immediately glad there's six-inch-think glass separating the two of them.

"I don't believe that," She says, shaking her head and finding an odd sort of conviction in her words, "You pled innocent  _and_  you told your lawyer that your friend Clive wasn't even armed when he was shot by Detective Davis."

His eyes widen and she sees a flash of fear rush through them, "How the fuck do you know that? Are you with  _them_? 'Cause I did everything you asked me too."

"Who's  _'them'_ , Peter?" She asks, raising one eyebrow and finding her heartbeat speeds up.

"No one. Forget it. Look, I'm in here 'cause me and Clive killed Stacy. She was screwing some pig bastard an' I told him he couldn't let the bitch get away with it, so we fuckin' killed her. That's what my statement says, and it's what I  _still_  say, alright?" He hisses furiously as he stands up.

"Hold on," She says, hoping he doesn't leave now, not when she has him on the cusp of  _something_ , "Why did you change your plea if you didn't want to end up in prison? Why did you change your statement? Did someone make you?" She asks, and he's staring at her like he's looking right through her. He looks more like a convicted murderer than he ever has. He's got that haunting, haunted look that she's seen on Charlie a few times.

He's breathing hard, like his body is deciding between fight and flight.

"You and Clive didn't kill Stacy, did you, Peter?" She asks her voice firm and suddenly, inexplicably sure.

"I'm in here 'cause me and Clive broke into Stacy's apartment and killed her." He repeats, "Now fuck off out of my sight, and  _don't_  come back." His voice is rough, nasty and sends a chill down her spine as he slams the handset back down onto the hook and signals to the guard that the visit it over.

She feels a little shell-shocked as she slowly replaces the receiver and sits back in the uncomfortable plastic chair for a second as Jackson is led out of the room. She takes a deep breath and sighs, trying to sort through what she just learned, if anything. After a minute of staring at the handset on the other side of the glass, she shakes herself back to reality and her eyes flick up to the clock. She's been gone for more than two hours - she needs to get back. Now.

She pushes her chair back and heads for the door so she can collect her stuff, sign out and get the hell back home.

The second after the door slides shut behind her, the guard on the door makes sure no one is in close enough vicinity to be preoccupied with him, and raises his hand held radio to his mouth, switching the frequency to one that's not used by anyone but those who know it's there and who know what it's for.

"Listen up," He says shortly, "We got a problem."


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Where'd you disappear off too?" He asks casually as the four of them head into the house, Ted and Olivia walking in front of them hand in hand.
> 
> There's a pause before she says, "My Mom's. She needed help with something."
> 
> He knows she's lying. He can hear it in her voice and read it in her body language. Whatever the reason for her dishonesty, he has a feeling he's not going to like it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry about the ending, I really am, but when else am I going to get that kind of opportunity for a cliffhanger?

She pulls into the driveway just a minute or so behind Charlie, who watches her carefully as she slows the car to a stop and climbs out. She's careful not to look up at him as she walks - he can read her like a book, and she knows they need more time for this conversation - more time and less of an audience.

"Ted," She says instead of going straight to Charlie like she wants to, "Welcome back."

"Thanks." Ted replies with a nervous smile, "Charlie says you're living here now. That's- that's nice."

She nods, wearing a stiff smile, "It is." She agrees, turning to the pretty red head standing beside Ted, "You must be Olivia."

"That's me," Olivia nods with a smile, "You're Charlie's girlfriend, Dani, right?"

Even though Charlie and Ted have disappeared back to the trunk of Ted's car to extract the few suitcases the two of them had brought back, Charlie doesn't take his eyes off of Dani the whole time while she chats with Olivia.

She looks- honestly, she looks shaken up by something. She's a little paler than usual, and her smile looks so forced that it reminds him of the way she'd looked when suspects used to hit on her in interrogations. The kind of smile that says,  _I don't know if I want to throw up or punch someone_.

"Where'd you disappear off too?" He asks casually as the four of them head into the house, Ted and Olivia walking in front of them hand in hand.

There's a pause before she says, "My Mom's. She needed help with something."

He knows she's lying. He can hear it in her voice and read it in her body language. Whatever the reason for her dishonesty, he has a feeling he's not going to like it.

He knows it's not  _someone else_ , despite what he knows of her promiscuous past; he has an instinctual knowledge that she hasn't spent the last few hours in another man's bed. He's not sure why he's so certain, just that he is. Dani wouldn't do that to him, not now and not ever. Not when she knows what it would do to him to find out that another person had put their hands on his one day wife (let's call it what it is - some signatures on a piece of paper aren't going to make them any more or less married than they already are). Not when they belong with and to each other the way they do.

"But she's okay now, though?" He asks anyway, playing along.

She makes him immediately. They lock eyes as he sets down the two cases he was carrying in the foyer of his house, next to the two Ted had brought in.

Dani shrugs, shaking her head a fraction, "She will be."

He nods, and they don't break eye contact until she steps forwards and sinks into his arms.

She's pressed against him all the way along the lines of their bodies, her feet together between his and her arms around his shoulders as she presses her face into the crook of his neck. He recovers his surprise fairly quickly, winding his arms around her waist and holding her to him.

"What's going on, Dani?" He asks, hearing the intensity and the worry in his own voice.

Then Ted pokes his head out of the kitchen and tentatively asks, "Why is there a mostly naked man sun bathing by your pool?"

It breaks the moment, and he knows he'll have to wait to find out later before she tells him - because she will. It's just a matter of when.

* * *

Dani apologetically tells the rest of the people staying in Charlie's house that she's not feeling up to dinner that night, and that she's going to turn in early. She receives sympathetic _feel better!_ 's from Olivia and Francesco, Rachel and Ted barely acknowledge her, and Charlie's frame seems to tense even further.

Dani and Charlie do not have secrets. Not anymore. It's not how they operate - they've kept things from each other before, and it never seems to work out well for anyone. She can feel his eyes on her as she leaves the kitchen and crosses the living room to head up the stairs.

She doesn't even spare a glance for the huge, comfortable bed she wishes she could sink into right about now -  _their_  bed - instead she heads straight for the master closet. She takes the key off the top of the frame and locks the door from the inside. She's not sure why she does it, just that she wants to be sure before she tells Charlie anything - and right now she's not sure about anything at all.

The stolen police file - this one stolen from the actual hall of records (where most crime files that are older than the computer database system the department now works with are kept) rather than a printed copy - peeks out at her from her purse on the floor.

" _You know I could lose my job for this, Detective Reese?"_

" _I know. I know, I wouldn't ask if I wasn't- if I wasn't desperate."_

" _And you think this case is something to do with Detective Crews' false imprisonment?"_

" _Maybe. I think- yes. Yeah, I'm pretty sure it is."_

" _Okay. Okay, I'll meet you in the LA Mall parking lot in a half an hour."_

" _Great. Oh, and Seever? Thank you."_

_*Pause*_

" _One more thing- I need you to do me a favour. If you get any reports about an inmate inside CSP, Peter Jackson, let me know would you?"_

She settles on the floor with enough space around her that she can pull the pages out and arrange them around her if she wants to, then takes out the case file and starts reading.

Her eyes scan the cover page of the autopsy report.

_Stacy Primrose; 25y/o, Single Caucasian Female. She was killed by a contusion to the head likely caused by blunt force trauma to the back of the skull. Victim has some minor defensive wounds on her hands and forearms._

She flips the page up and looks briefly at the coroners photographs, then at the crime scene photos. They didn't take as many in those days, they had to be more sparing when they were using rolls of film that took thirty photos each if you were lucky, rather than a seemingly limitless memory card capable of holding hundreds of images.

Stacy was a pretty young woman, slim and small and blonde, with brown eyes that Dani imagines would probably have looked warm and kind when the woman was still alive. In the photo that shows her whole body, she's sprawled inelegantly across the kitchen floor, a puddle of blood surrounding her head.

So far she hasn't found anything listing what the murder weapon used to cause the "blunt force trauma" to the back of Stacy's skull was - and that doesn't make any damn sense at all.

Her eyes are open and Dani can see that she's holding something in the open palm of her hand.

 _What_ _ **is**_ _that_? She wonders, pulling the pictures from the file and laying them out across the floor until she reaches the page that lists the items brought into custody with the victim - which usually meant they were thought to be evidence of some kind.

_1 x ring. Gold band, small carat diamond._

So- an engagement ring then? She makes a note of it on the yellow legal pad that seems ever present in the closet these days, just in case they make a notable connection.

What was it Jackson had said? That they'd killed her because she was cheating on him?

So, hypothetically speaking, why does the woman have an engagement ring? They went to the house to kill her, not propose - and it doesn't say anywhere in the paperwork she's seen so far that Stacy and Clive were engaged, and neither Wellard nor Jackson seem like the type of men to leave symbols behind, or to stage a crime scene in any kind of meaningful manner.

_She was screwing some pig bastard an' I told him he couldn't let the bitch get away with it._

That's what Jackson had said right? And in most prisons, 'pig' is what the inmates call cops - hell, Charlie has the tattoo to prove it.

She blinks and then sits up a little straighter.

_Stacy was a friend of Mickey's. I think they were dating._

If Rayborn was involved with the victim, there's no way they'd have let him within a hundred miles of the investigation into her murder, let alone allowed him and his partner go with the officers tasked with arresting a suspect - which, logically speaking, means no one knew they were dating.

She sits back on her heels and surveys the pages spread out in front of her.

If no one knew they were dating other than his best friends, which means they were purposefully keeping it a secret from the department after she died, then that means they were specifically hiding something relevant to an ongoing murder investigation, which as cops, they'd know not to do.

The doorknob rattles, like someone's trying to come in, then Charlie's concerned, tense voice comes through the door.

"Dani? Everything okay in there?" He asks and she swallows forcefully.

 _What am I not seeing here_?

"Uh- yeah. Yeah, everything's fine." She replies distractedly, her eyes flicking up to the timeline on the wall.

 _Stacy left and someone went to prison and Jack changed. They all did_.

Stacy was murdered in December 1984 - which is pretty close to being right smack in the middle of their  _what-the-fuck-happened-to-make-them-all-so-damn-close-and-sketchy_  time period window.

That's what her mother had said, right? That  _It all happened around the same time_. Standing in Jack's office she'd talked about the old days and the past that no one seemed to understand. No one but six people, three of whom are now dead.

"Will you please come to bed?" He asks, sounding anxious and tired, "I get that you don't want to talk about it, whatever it is, but it's almost one in the morning."

She blinks sluggishly as she checks her watch and realises he's right. She's been staring at the pictures and words on the pages for so long now that she's started to think in circles. She's maddeningly close to something, she's sure of it, she just can't work out what.

 _Or maybe you just don't want to see it_ , her brain supplies, and she angrily sweeps the sheets of paper away from herself, stands up and walks to the door which she unlocks and then slowly opens.

Charlie's standing on the other side, of course, leaning against the door frame and watching her with worried eyes.

"I'm sorry." She tells him, with an inexplicable lump in her throat as flicks off the light and pulls the closet door shut behind herself _._

 _Ignorance is supposed to be bliss_.

The problem is, right now she's half way between ignorance and enlightenment, and she can't seem to go backwards or forwards. She's honestly not sure which would be easier at this point - or which she'd prefer.

"Come to bed." He implores her, reaching out and taking her hand in his.

She nods tiredly, linking their fingers together and squeezing for a second before she pulls away.

"I need a shower." She tells him, her voice gritty as she heads past him towards the bathroom.

He watches her walk away, not knowing she's thinking  _I won't lay in bed with you covered in the grease and grime of prison_.

He stares at the dark wooden door for a long moment, and considers walking in there and seeing what it is she's hiding from him. His hand twitches towards the handle before he pauses and shakes his head, letting his detached zen settle over himself as he turns to get ready for bed.

* * *

He feels her climb into bed beside him half an hour later, molding the petite, warm lines of her body along his bare back and pressing a kiss to his shoulder, over the spiders web tattoo. It's something of a habit of hers, almost whenever he's shirtless around her, she kisses the ugly black lines of it like she's grounding him, or herself, or perhaps them both, to the reality they live in that is sometimes a scary, difficult place to be.

It's another reminder to him - and most likely a subconscious one at that - that though she's not totally here with him right now, she'll always come back to him the way she promises to, every time they share kisses or  _I love you_ s or their bed.

It doesn't take him long to fall asleep after that, deeply and dreamlessly, until what feels like a couple of hours later when he hears the distant ringing of a phone, and feels her warmth leave his side. He doesn't open his eyes, but he hears her pad across the carpet, then step back into the closet. She doesn't switch on the light or close the door. He can't pick out what she's saying, but he can hear the low murmur of her voice talking talking talking.

She doesn't sound happy at all, and with each pause between her speaking, she sounds less and less okay, and his zen fades faster and faster. They've established he doesn't like it when people upset her, and right now she sounds extremely rattled.

The call lasts for maybe a minute or two before she comes back into the room, faster this time, and to his side of the bed not hers.

"Charlie wake up." She whispers, her hand on his arm. His eyes fly open immediately and he sits up so fast they almost bump heads. She sounds terrified. Dani doesn't do terrified.

Her eyes are wide and she looks like she's struggling to find the right words, but still he's patient (against his stronger judgement) with her.

"I think- I think I figured it out." She tells him, biting her lip, "Jesus, Charlie, I think I figured the whole thing out."


	14. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "It could still be a trap." Charlie reasons, before telling Dani what Ted has already told him.
> 
> "Maybe," Ted agrees, "But it's the best I can give you right now."
> 
> There's a pause on the other end of the line, then the moving red dot on the screen that's showing Charlie and Dani's whereabouts turns off of the highway and starts heading, much faster, in the direction of the airfield. Ted can hear the two of them talking, their voices hushed and distant.
> 
> "Right," Charlie starts, "We've got a plan. Sort of…"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A couple of people left reviews on the last chapter who were worried about Dani lying to Charlie and/or about Charlie's reaction to the whole thing, basically all of that is sort of explained in the next chapter. It was meant to be explained in this one originally, but then apparently the characters had other ideas and wouldn't cooperate. This chapter is basically a set up for the next chapter, and it's (I think) the last one that asks more questions than it answers.

Between them they have two guns (one revolver and one Glock), a flick knife and a patrol officer's badge that's no longer in recognised circulation with the LAPD. All of them belong to Charlie.

The revolver and the officer's badge are both from before he went to prison, and the knife and the Glock both from after he got out. He'd always known The Group would try to get him off the force if they could, though at that stage he'd had no clue what any of it was about, or who most - if  _any_  - of them were, so he'd decided to make sure he was protected while he could still get access to that protection under the radar (the Glock isn't his department issue one. That's locked up in an IAD locker somewhere. No, the Glock is one he bought from an old- well, not  _friend_  exactly, but a man he'd known in prison, along with the four inch long, wicked sharp flick knife. He didn't need them registered to his name).

The knife is in her pocket and the badge is on his belt for the sake of appearances. The revolver is tucked into the back of Charlie's trousers, the Glock into the back of Dani's jeans. They're both wearing blazers to hide the bulge of the guns - they only need to hide them for a little while. Just long enough to get them past the security at least.

They pull up to Rayborn's house and find the gates open.

"He's not here." Charlie says what they're both thinking. Rayborn isn't the type to leave his security system off unless there's a reason he doesn't care - the only logical reason in this case being that he's gone and he's not planning to return. Dani nods then drives up the drive way any way, wanting to be sure.

The double garage doors are open and the lights are on, with no cars inside. Charlie's phone rings on the dashboard and he answers it with a terse  _"Crews_."

Dani moves to get out of the car, figuring they're going to have to search the house anyway to be sure, when Charlie's hand on her arm stops her.

"All of it?" He asks whoever he's talking to. "Jesus. Okay. Call me if you find anything else."

There's a pause, then he hangs up the phone.

"That was Ted," He says, "Rayborn just drained his accounts - wired pretty much all of it to a couple of accounts in the Cayman Islands."

"Pretty much all of it?" She parrots back and Charlie shrugs.

"The rest of it's probably in cash - for hand to hand bribes and quick payments."

She nods slowly, leaning back in her seat.

"So where the hell would he go?" She asks, drumming her fingers against the steering wheel.

"I don't know," He admits, "But I know someone who might."

* * *

"What are you doing up?" Olivia asks, yawning as she steps into the kitchen wrapped up in one of his sweaters, "It's four in the morning."

Ted's eyes are burning where he's been staring at the computer screen intently for the last couple of hours, and the island counter in the middle of the kitchen looks a lot like it did last year after the police search meant Charlie's conspiracy wall ended up being a conspiracy table for a while.

"Just checking something for Charlie." He tells her with a yawn, "You should go back to bed."

She moves across the room and leans down behind him, her hands crossed over his chest and her chin resting on his shoulder. "That doesn't look like  _just_  anything." She points out at sight of the loading map on the screen and the mass of open programs displayed on the task bar at the bottom.

"I don't want to get you mixed up in any of this." He tells her nervously as the map loads, displaying two flashing dots. One is red, and moving along the highway. The other is green, and it's stationary in-

"Shit." He mutters under his breath, reaching for his cell phone.

As soon as Charlie answers the phone Ted says, "I spoke to Amanda like you said, and when I showed her what Rayborn had done to his accounts she let me have wireless access to their tracking software. Rayborn is showing up at a hardly used airstrip a little way out of the city, and according to this he's been there for half an hour. You probably don't have much time left to reach him." He tells his friend, simultaneously trying to figure out how to explain any of this to Olivia.

"Are you sure it's him?" Charlie asks down the phone, sounding simultaneously concerned and annoyed - not with Ted, just with the whole situation in general.

Ted hits a few buttons on the keyboard. "Rayborn's cell phone is showing up inside his house, the cell phone I'm tracking is one used by one of his bodyguards."

"It could still be a trap." Charlie reasons, before telling Dani what Ted has already told him.

"Maybe," Ted agrees, "But it's the best I can give you right now."

There's a pause on the other end of the line, then the moving red dot on the screen that's showing Charlie and Dani's whereabouts turns off of the highway and starts heading, much faster, in the direction of the airfield. Ted can hear the two of them talking, their voices hushed and distant.

"Right," Charlie starts, "We've got a plan. Sort of…"

* * *

When they pull up onto the tarmac of the airstrip, there's a small, white private plan sitting not a hundred feet from them. At the bottom of the fold down steps stands a no-nonsense looking man with a shaven head and a gun in a holster at his side.

His hand twitches towards it when Dani and Charlie climb out of the car and walk towards him.

"What do you want?" He asks in a thick Eastern-European accent. "This is a private, licensed flight."

Charlie pulls back the side of his jacket to reveal his badge, and the man built like an ox can just manage to see it in the dim light.

"We just want to talk to your employer." He says amiably as they walk closer.

"I'm afraid I can't let you on the plane." He says, and he doesn't sound afraid at all. He sounds smug, and Dani is sick to death of being jerked around, and of being one step behind people like him.

The knife is out of her pocket without her consciously deciding to wield it, and she flicks it open, holding it out in front of herself the same way she saw Crews' do with Manny Umaga during the case that feels like lifetimes ago from where they're at now.

"We don't have time for your bullshit right now. We're going to talk to Rayborn,  _now_ , and whether you're alive or dead for that exchange makes no damned difference to me." She spits at him, and the gun is out of his holster immediately.

Charlie doesn't like it when people point guns at Dani.

He pulls his own gun out and points it at the man's head with a grim expression on his face. "You don't want to do that. You're out numbered and out gunned, and if you want to be alive in ten minutes time I suggest you drop that - but it's like she said; it doesn't make any difference to us whether you live or die."

The guy attempts to stare Charlie down.

"We need to leave, Marius." Rayborn's voice calls from inside, "Everything good out there?"

"No problem, Mr. Rayborn." The bodyguard calls back, not even looking over his shoulder.

After another tense few seconds the guy opens his hands and lets the gun fall to the floor with a clatter. It's clearly a calculated move, because the next thing he does is lunge for Dani. Before Charlie can pull the trigger, his wild little tigress slashes the knife blade upwards. The guy cries out and falls back - the cut across his upper torso is too shallow to do any real damage, but deep enough to keep him down for a while.

"Not bad." He tells her with an oddly proud grin, and she flicks the knife closed.

"I'm starting to see why you like it so much." She shrugs, then nods to the doorway of the plane.

"We should hurry this up." She suggests, and he nods his agreement.

When they step into the cabin, if Rayborn is surprised he doesn't show it. Instead he wears an unreadable expression and says, "I know you're obsessed with fruit, kiddo, but what's your stance on Coconuts?"

* * *

They've been flying for maybe ten minutes when Rayborn says, "I knew if anyone was going to find me, it would be you two."

"And you weren't worried about getting caught fleeing the country?" Dani asks skeptically, noticing but not commenting on the fact that Charlie has positioned himself behind her - Rayborn as he is, in the air basically by himself is no threat, but whoever's in that cockpit might well be, and as everyone seems to have learnt by now, Charlie doesn't take chances when it comes to Dani. He's not willing to take that risk - or any risk at all, really.

"I'm not  _fleeing_ ," He says disgustedly, "I prefer to think of it as a high stakes version of hide and seek - and besides, why would I need to worry about getting caught by you two? You're private citizens now." His expression is so sarcastic and all-knowing that she wants to slap him.

"Yeah, no thanks to you." Dani says fiercely, "Why the fuck would you have your minions send me back to  _narcotics_? Did you fall down and bump your head and forget about the time I spent nearly eight months in rehab or are you just getting old?"

"That was nothing to do with me." He defends immediately, "I tried to talk them out of it but the others were worried having you on the force would be a liability right now."

"Because of Charlie." Dani guesses immediately and Rayborn shrugs.

"You two were never supposed to end up so close."

"No, you put us together because you thought you could use me to get to him." Dani parries back, and Charlie fights off the urge to smile - because this is the Dani he knows. This is the Dani he fell in love with - the feisty, take no prisoners, don't-get-in-my-way-or-I'll-fuck-up-your-shit Dani whose anger burns so close to the surface of her skin that you can practically feel the heat when you stand close enough.

Rayborn doesn't dispute her claim, instead he stands and heads over to the drinks cabinet and pours himself two fingers of scotch, tilting the bottle towards the two of them.

"Funny." Dani says narrowing her eyes, "But you're not really in any position to be making jokes right now, Mickey."

He looks amused, "You're on my plane, Dani. You don't even know where we're going."

"We're the ones with the guns." She replies, and Charlie sees her reach back and run her fingers over the handle of the Glock like she's checking it's still there.

"We're on a  _plane_ ," Rayborn says, shaking his head and leaning against the bar, "If you shoot me you'll kill all of us."

"Good job I've got this then, huh." Dani shrugs, pulling Charlie's knife back out of her pocket and flicking it open. He can where the silver blade is edged with drying blood from when she cut Rayborn's security guard across the chest earlier. Rayborn might be a confident man, but he didn't get to where he is today by being stupid. He nods slowly and holds his hands out in front of himself for a second before lowering them again.

"You don't want to be waving that around, Dani." He tells her, and she bristles at the superiority in his voice.

"I'm not a little kid anymore." She replies scathingly, "I haven't been for a long time now - you do remember why, don't you?"

There's a harsh, grating quality to her voice that doesn't totally mask the raw pain there too. He wants to reach out to her, but he knows she wants -  _needs_  - this moment for herself. She hadn't had the opportunity to figure out everything she'd wanted to about her father before he'd died, but here and now, with Rayborn, she might be able to find out once and for all if he's a good guy who's done bad things or a bad guy who's done good things (she's pretty sure it's the latter, but you never know) and she wants to stand on her own two feet for that particular opportunity.

Rayborn's expression darkens, and it seems he and Charlie agree on at least one thing - nobody hurts Dani and lives to tell the tale. No way.

"I took care of him. For you." Rayborn says, his voice as dark as his expression.

"You saved my life." She corrects, a hint of desperation slipping into her voice before she steels herself again. "But now you're pulling it apart. There are things we need to ask you, things we need to know, and if you care about me at all still, I need you to tell me the truth, okay?"

He can't help it. He can't hear her in pain and then not do anything about it. He steps closer to her, and it's apparently the right thing to do because obviously senses him moving closer and takes a half step backwards, so that her back is pressed against his chest, and he sets his right hand on her hip, displaying comfort to her and protective (bordering on possessive) intent to Rayborn.

Rayborn has the grace to look torn before he frustratedly asks, "Why are you so set on dragging up the past? It's not gonna do any good for anyone."

"For you." She corrects him again, "It looks pretty damn good to us."

Rayborn's eyes flick between the two of them, taking in both their physical closeness and their obvious intimacy with one another, the way his hand rests easily on her hip and the way she leans into his body like she trusts him.

"You two, huh?" He observes, and she raises her chin defiantly.

"You're the one who had Davis put us together," She points out, "What did you think would happen?" She tilts her head to the side and fixes him with a steady, fiery glare. "That you'd get Davis to ask me to spy on Charlie? Have me help you get him kicked off of the force?"

"The first part sure," Rayborn replies with a shrug, "But I didn't want him off the force. If I wanted that, he wouldn't have even made it back on when he got out."

Dani huffs a short laugh, shaking her head at him. "Bullshit."

"I'm telling you the truth." Rayborn says sharply, "That's what you wanted, isn't it?"

They're both sizing him up, trying to figure out if they can trust him. Obviously they can't, but they're going to need more from him in order to figure out if they can trust his information.

"Why should we believe you?" Dani asks sharply, but Charlie tilts his head to the side, examining Rayborn and the things they already know.

"Because he still wanted me to take over when he was too old." He says flatly, and Rayborn points at him before dropping his hand back to his side.

"There's hope for you yet, Kiddo." Rayborn offers, and Dani feels Charlie's fingers tighten around her hip. She can't say anything to help in front of Rayborn, but she also doesn't want him to kill him before they can get the answers they need, so she covers his hand with her own, settling her fingers into the canyons between his.

_I'm here with you, and I need you here with me; okay, Charlie?_

"Let's get something straight,  _Uncle Mickey_ ," She spits venomously, "You might not be used to this, but you are  _not_  the one in control here. We already know what happened with Stacy, and what you did to Peter Jackson but I wanted to be- to be wrong."

They stare at each other for a second, and he wonders what it must feel like to have the person you saw as a hero in childhood turn out to be the monster that stalks your nightmares.

"So I-" She pauses, shaking her head and sighing, "So I asked Charlie to let me talk to you before we turn you in."

"You're really gonna turn me in?" He asks, raising his eyebrows as if he doesn't believe her.

"I'm not like you. My job isn't to judge people.  _My_  job is to follow the evidence to the truth, and then turn whatever I find over to the DA. That's it. Doesn't matter what I think, doesn't matter how I feel, doesn't matter who thinks I owe them what. I'm not a fucking vigilante." She insists through gritted teeth, "So you sit your ass down and you tell us what we want to know or this is going to get real ugly real fucking fast."

"You said you already know all my dirty secrets." Rayborn points out with a shrug, though he looks much less settled than he did when they first arrived, "And thanks, but I'll stand."

They stare each other down for a second before the old man sighs and shakes his head. "Come on then. What is it you want to ask me?"

Charlie reaches into his jacket pocket and passes Dani the photo. She steps forward, out of his personal space, and slowly passes it to Rayborn. No one says a word.

Rayborn stares down at the photo with a completely unreadable expression on his face before he shakes his head again, and emits a weak chuckle.

"Of course  _you two_  figured it out," He says wryly, tapping the back of the photo against the fingertips on his free hand, "It's you two, how could you miss it? Nothing like those shit-for-brains so-called Detectives they got down there now." He's not really talking to them. He's talking to himself mostly, Charlie and Dani just happen to be there.

"I loved my wife," Rayborn tells them with a tinge of something between sadness and nostalgia in his voice, "But Stacy- she was the one."

Apparently Dani isn't in a charitable mood, because she raises her eyebrows and says; "Yeah? Then why did you kill her?"


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So it's been a little while since I updated this??? I'm really so sorry, I've been completely blocked on works for this fandom for a while now - I had this chapter, and the next one which I'll be posting momentarily, all finished but when I stopped writing I forgot to post it. But better late than never right? D:
> 
> The sections that start with the first few lines of the text in italics are the flashbacks I promised, except for the first section which contains the last paragraph or so of the last chapter in italics at the top to refresh your memory.

" _Of course you two figured it out," He says wryly, tapping the back of the photo against the fingertips on his free hand, "It's you two, how could you miss it? Nothing like those shit-for-brains so-called Detectives they got down there now." He's not really talking to them. He's talking to himself mostly, Charlie and Dani just happen to be there._

" _I loved my wife," Rayborn tells them, "But Stacy- she was the one."_

_Apparently Dani isn't in a charitable mood, because she raises her eyebrows and says; "Yeah? Then why'd you kill her?"_

"It's not that simple." He protests, looking up from the photo in his hands, "None of this was supposed to happen. None of it."

"But it did." Dani fires back, "We know you killed her, we know you and Ames set up Peter Jackson for it and we know that you originally intended to set up his best friend Clive Wellard, but Wellard ended up getting shot by Davis. What we don't know is why."

"Does it matter?" Rayborn asks sharply, "It happened - more than  _twenty_  fucking years ago!"

"Just because we know what happened doesn't mean it makes any damn sense. Right now, from where I'm standing, it looks like you and Stacy were dating, you came home from work one night and just decided to kill her for no reason, then-"

"Enough!" Rayborn bellows, an ugly sneer contorting his face as he slams his glass back down on the bar, "You haven't got a clue what the fuck you're talking about little girl."

"Careful." Charlie barks sharply, taking a step forwards, "You talk to her with respect or you don't say another damn word."

They stare each other down, and Dani sees the exact moment that Rayborn remembers that the man in front of him could kill him with a single blow from his bare hands, and backs down. Wise move. She might want answers from Rayborn, but she knows that if Rayborn crosses the line and Charlie loses his temper, she's not going to hold him back again. Let the chips fall where they may.

* * *

_Dani apologetically tells the rest of the people staying in Charlie's house that she's not feeling up to dinner that night, and that she's going to turn in early. She receives sympathetic feel better!'s from Olivia and Francesco, Rachel and Ted barely acknowledge her, and Charlie's frame seems to tense even further._

_Dani and Charlie do not have secrets. Not anymore. It's not how they operate - they've kept things from each other before, and it never seems to work out well for anyone._

Once they've finished eating, Olivia decides to turn in early, as do Rachel and Francesco. Charlie and Ted stand on the back patio, each with a cold beer in hand.

"What's going on with you two then?" Ted asks after a comfortable stretch of silence. You get used to sharing silence with someone when you're also used to sharing an eight foot by ten foot cell.

"What, me and Dani?" Charlie asks, and Ted gives him a look that says  _who else?_  "That obvious, huh?"

"You both look like you're wound up so tight you could explode at any given moment." Ted replies, shaking his head and swallowing a taking a mouthful of beer.

"She knows something." He tells his friend with a shake of his head, "When I left to pick you guys up from the airport she was looking through a bunch of files to try and figure out where all this conspiracy stuff started. Then she was coming back from somewhere at the same time we were, and she lied to me about where she went."

Ted regards his best friend carefully for a moment before saying, "And you're sure she's lying?"

"She said she was at her Mom's but she was so knotted up over something she could barely look me in the eye." Charlie sighs, shaking his head, "She's here but she's not here. I don't think we've been this far apart in months."

"I know this isn't what you want to hear," Ted starts cautiously, "But-" He cuts himself off and looks away, worried about Charlie's reaction.

"But  _what_ , Ted?" Charlie asks, a little sharply.

"She's Jack Reese's daughter, Charlie. Did she ever explain to you what that photo of herself on Rayborn's boat was about?" His voice is hesitant, but he hears what Ted isn't saying louder than what he is.

_Are you sure you can trust her?_

"Jack Reese is dead, and Rayborn is her godfather." There's an unmistakeable edge to Charlie's voice this time, "And I love her. Whatever it is she's lying to me about, it's not like that. There's got to be a good reason for it."

"Are you sure?" He asks, with a grimace.

"Yes." Charlie's eyes are ice, his voice fire and brimstone; the voice of a man who's enemies end up dead. "There's no question about that, and that's all there is too it."

Ted takes a deep breath, then sighs heavily, sorting through the information in his mind and trying not to feel relieved at the demise of his old tormentor.

"Well then, if you trust her-"

"I do." Charlie interrupts automatically, the sharpness still clear in his voice.  _Back off_ , he's saying.

"Okay, but what I was going to say was; if you trust her, then you need to let her work through whatever it is." Ted suggests, and Charlie's eyes narrow as he turns to look at him, silently asking him to continue.

"If you're sure that she's not working for them, or that she's not with someone else, or that she's not using again, then you have to leave her be, to work it out, whatever it is. Like you said, there's got to be a reason she's not telling you."

"That's true." Charlie agrees, taking a slow sip of his beer as he considers the option that he hadn't even considered - that she was using again. He discards that thought almost as soon as it comes to him. The obvious answer is of course that she definitely wasn't drunk or high when they got back, but the truth is he can't imagine her going back down that road. Maybe he's being niave - or maybe he just believes in her that much.

"Plus, you gotta remember, Charlie, she's just as affected by all this as you are, if not more." Ted points out, and Charlie blinks in surprise as Ted's voice drags him back to reality. "You had twelve years to get used to the idea that things aren't what they seem. She's got to cope with all of that, plus all the stuff the two of you have found out since then  _and_  try to cope with the fact that people she's known and relied on for most of her life are strangers to her. That's got to mess with a person's head."

Charlie doesn't like the fact that a new secret between the two of them is a pretty big step back, but he also has to admit that Ted's got a point. He's not sure how well he would cope in her shoes.

* * *

"We're thirty minutes from landing, Mr. Rayborn. You and your guests will need to take a seat." A voice echoes over the intercom system, and both Dani and Charlie wait for Rayborn to sit down before they too take a seat, neither of them showing any signs of comfort at all.

"Clive and Peter may not have killed her but it was their damn fault." Rayborn mutters bitterly after a while, still looking down at the photograph in his hand.

Dani and Charlie sit still in silence, waiting for Rayborn to continue - they're only giving him the time to think it through because the fact is, the story doesn't make any damn sense without a reasonable explanation. Plus, so far, the only proof they have that they story they have is the right one is gut feelings and the words of a currently convicted murderer.

* * *

" _Charlie wake up." She whispers, her hand on his arm. His eyes fly open immediately and he sits up so fast they almost bump heads. She sounds terrified. Dani doesn't do terrified._

_Her eyes are wide and she looks like she's struggling to find the right words, but still he's patient (against his stronger judgement) with her._

" _I think- I think I figured it out." She tells him, biting her lip, "Jesus, Charlie, I think I figured the whole thing out."_

Before he can even open his mouth to respond to that somewhat mind boggling statement she hands him a police file and sits down on the edge of the bed.

"I went to CSP while you were picking up Ted and Olivia this afternoon." She tells him nervously, the words tumbling out like she can't stand to hold everything in for one more second, "because when I was going through Davis' file I found this Officer Involved Shooting report about how in 1984 she'd shot and killed an armed suspect named Clive Wellard who she and my Father were trying to arrest for murdering a woman named Stacy Primrose."

She taps the file he's now holding tentatively, as if it might bite him, and when he doesn't give any indication he's going to open the file she opens it for him. It's not in any kind of order now, all the pages have just been stuffed back inside from where she'd scattered them around the closet earlier.

The item on top just happens to be the zoomed out version of one of the crime scene photos - the one that shows her whole body and the complete blood pool surrounding her head.

"When I went to visit Jackson today he was completely freaked out and asked me something about 'Them' and said that he'd done everything they'd asked. Then when I asked him why he'd confess to a crime he didn't commit he lost it and started yelling at me about how the two of them had killed her because they found out she was cheating on Wellard."

Charlie looks up from the photo with a nonplussed expression on his face. "A crime he didn't commit?" He parrots back to her and she nods.

"It was just a gut feeling at first. None of the evidence adds up, and the original arrest warrant didn't even include Jackson. It was just for Wellard, who, conveniently, ended up dead." She flips through a couple of pages in the murder investigation file until she reaches the sheet of paper documenting receipt of the warrants, "See how the dates underneath say that Wellard's warrant was issued on the 3rd of January '85, but Jackson's warrant was issued the day  _after_  he was arrested on the 5th."

"Which is what they do to account for unexpected arrests and confessions." Charlie nods, recalling a fair few cases when they'd been through that situation.

"But like I said, it was mostly just gut feeling at first, plus a whole lot of evidence that just didn't add up; but I wasn't sure, so I called Seever on my way back and got her to get the Primrose murder file for me, and instead of finding an explanation I just found more questions - the way she died for instance. One hard hit to the back of the head doesn't suggest premeditated murder. It suggests someone was panicking, and they just grabbed the first thing at hand. Second, the investigators never actually found the murder weapon, and the fact that they didn't wasn't even mentioned in the file other than as a footnote. Next, Mickey Rayborn was dating her at the time of her murder, and yet he was allowed to be part of the investigation into her death."

"Which implies that he buried any information about the relationship." Charlie deduces, turning a few pages and reading through the report on the arrests of Clive Wellard and Peter Jackson. "It says here that not only did Jackson initially deny anything to do with it, he also got his lawyer to kick up a fuss within the department over whether or not Wellard was really carrying when Davis shot him." Charlie points out and Dani nods.

He looks up at her and tilts his head to the side, fixing her with a guarded look. "Who was that on the phone?" He asks after a pause.

"Jackson." She replies succinctly, and there's another long pause before she continues - her voice carrying less certainty and more sadness. "He was on a cell phone he got smuggled into his cell. He said- he said that 'some pig named Mickey was the one who killed her'."

"Are you sure he's telling the truth?" Charlie asks sceptically, "I mean, I know guys inside who'd have said pretty much anything if it meant they might get out."

"He sounded terrified. He said that a guard had told him to enjoy his last meal - Charlie, he told me that the day Stacy was murdered Wellard called him so freaked out he was virtually in tears, and told him that he'd walked over to Stacy's to see her, but he saw two cops walk out the front door looking like they didn't want to be seen so once they'd driven off he walked up to the house, and when no one answered he looked through the kitchen window and saw Stacy laying there in the middle of this pool of blood. He'd freaked out and not had a clue what to do - so he'd panicked and run home and called Jackson. A few days later Davis and my father show up at Wellard's place to arrest him, and they find Jackson there too - only problem is, Wellard recognises my father as one of the cops who was there that night and starts screaming about how he must have killed her, he lunges for my Dad and Davis panics and shoots him." She goes silent for a second and swallows harshly. "They told Jackson they didn't want to kill him too, so instead they were going to arrest him, and at first, he didn't cooperate until 'some guy called Ames' visited him in holding and said that if he didn't confess to the murder, then instead of killing him they'd kill his whole family."

"And you're sure it was Rayborn who killed her?" The unvoiced question, of course, being  _Are you sure it wasn't your father?_

"Most people  _are_  killed by the person they're sleeping with." Dani replies dully, "My best guess is that Rayborn killed her for some reason, maybe they had a fight that got out of hand, maybe he was drunk, I don't know, but whatever happened, afterwards he panicked and called my Dad to help him figure out what to do - I mean, by all accounts they were best friends."

"So this was the thing that ties them all together." Charlie says slowly, "Rayborn kills this girl, Stacy, Reese helps him clean up the scene and remove any evidence from her house that the two of them were in a relationship, Davis shoots Wellard to protect Reese, Ames owes them because they vouched for him a few months before that, so he forces Jackson to confess. Dunn picks up any slack and helps steer the investigation where they need it to go and Ellis sits in IAD and rubber stamps everything. They'd all been friends for years so they just saw it as helping out a friend who'd made a mistake."

"I think it's something to do with the reason they ended up setting you up." Dani voice quietly, and his eyes flick up from the report to her face, not understanding what she means.

"When they were trying to figure out what to do about Hollis and the Seybolts, they figured…" she waves her hand aimlessly and trails off.

"They figured they'd done it once before and gotten away with it, why not do it again." Charlie picks up where she leaves off and she nods with a grim expression on her face. "And they all resented Rayborn for killing Dunn and for deciding he wanted me to run things when they were all too old and so he decided I'd be the perfect scapegoat."

They sit in silence for a minute, trying to absorb the slightly overwhelming turn the evening had taken. They'll talk about Dani lying - and visiting a prison without him - later, right now they're just trying to figure out  _why_  all this happened. Why did Rayborn kill Stacy? Charlie is the one to break the silence.

"So what, now we turn this in and watch the whole thing get buried by Rayborn's people in the department?" Charlie asks sceptically, and something that can't be described as anything other than pain flashes across Dani's face before she carefully schools her expression.

"What is it?" He asks and she shakes her head and shrugs.

"Hey, no," He says reproachfully, closing the file and setting it on her of the bed, "What's wrong?"

"I just-" She shakes her head again, and he hears the catch in her voice and sees the slight quiver of her bottom lip, "I wanted to be wrong, so badly."

It's like a knife in his gut to see her like this - it takes a hell of a lot to get her to drop her defences, and he knows this will be another moment that they won't talk about again; but he hears Ted's voice in his head as he leans closer to her and pulls her to his chest before leaning back, so that she's curled up on his chest.

_You had twelve years to get used to the idea that things aren't what they seem. She's got to cope with all of that, plus all the stuff the two of you have found out since then_ _**and** _ _try to cope with the fact that people she's known and relied on for most of her life are strangers to her. That's got to mess with a person's head._

Regardless of whatever else he's done, when Dani was fourteen years old, Mickey Rayborn saved her life. Saved her from the worst kind of monster humanity has to offer - a man who destroys the innocence of a child. Though the marks on her body have faded now (apart from the still-fading track marks on her arms) the scars to Dani's psyche are permanent.

"I'm so sorry." He tells her quietly, reaching down to pull the blankets back over them both before wrapping his arms around her. He doesn't know what else to say and it breaks his heart not to be able to help her. You're supposed to be able help the people you love. You're supposed to be able to make them feel better when they're hurting, but right now he can't do anything at all.

He realises he must have been thinking out loud again when she says, "This is enough," she turns her head into his chest and kisses the bullet hole scar just above one of his tattoos, "Just hold me, okay?"

So he does. He holds her while she settles herself and lets herself get used to what comes next.

"I want to see him." She says after a while, tilting her head up and resting her chin on his chest, "Before we turn him in, I want- I  _need_  to know why."

"Then tomorrow we turn them all in." He says and she nods.

She's not reluctant about it. She knows that the three remaining confirmed members of The Group deserve to be put away for the things they've done.

Mickey Rayborn, Karen Davis and Harrison Ellis are criminals and liars and murderers, and for that they must accept responsibility and pay the price.

She has no feelings regarding Ellis whatsoever beyond her anger towards him for driving her off the force. Davis and Rayborn are a completely different story, and she's determined not to be the one to arrest them. Charlie is the one who deserves that honour, and they both know it's something he needs to do in order to move past the things that have happened to him since that fateful day in 1994.

"We should go." Dani says, her voice steady, "If Jackson thinks someone's after him, that means that somehow someone knows we're onto them. We might not have a lot of time to get to Rayborn before he disappears."

* * *

They can feel the plane slowly sinking through the sky, and Charlie is seriously losing patience with the wizened old man in front of them - he seems much smaller all of a sudden, much  _less_  than the man who made himself an untouchable crime boss whilst working inside the third largest police force in the United States.

"I went over there to propose." Rayborn tells them, his body language regimented, giving nothing away. "But before I could we ended up having a fight about her old friend Clive Wellard." He shakes his head and looks up at Dani, "She said she was afraid of me. Can you believe that?"

"Not at all…" Dani replies sarcastically, and Charlie reminds himself not to smile. Even in this situation, when things really aren't good, she's still got a spine of steel.

"She said something like, 'he would never hurt me the way you do'. I didn't hurt her, it didn't make any sense. She just kept going on and on about how I should leave her alone, and she just- she wouldn't  _stop_  and she turned to walk out on me and so I… I hit her with the paperweight that always sat on the sideboard in her kitchen. Christ, there was so much blood and she was just-  _dead_."

"So you panicked and called my father, and then the two of you planned to set up the guy she was seeing behind your back, but he saw the two of you leaving her house that night, and thought my father was the one who killed her." Dani fills in the rest, "So Davis shot him, my father called you and told you what happened, and you guys figured;what the hell, we've got a perfectly viable suspect here. Then you and your buddies made the whole thing airtight and there was nothing that innocent man could do to change his fate." She pauses and her eyes flick down to the photo in Rayborn's hand - the zoomed in image of an engagement ring laying in Stacy's half closed hand, and when she continues her voice is much quieter. "But before you left you couldn't resist leaving the ring behind."

Rayborn's eyes snap up to meet Dani's as the plan touches down on the runway wherever the hell they are.

"Jackson tell you all that, did he?"

There's a gleam in his eye that Charlie doesn't like as Rayborn stands up. Charlie stands too, he doesn't like to be at a disadvantage in a situation like this and, sensing how unsettled Charlie is, Dani stands too.

There's a mechanical click as the door opens downwards, now the stairs they'll use to get off the plane.

"I don't know where you think you're going, Rayborn, we're taking you straight back to LA to charge you." Charlie says smartly as Rayborn crosses the cabin and walks calmly down the steps. That's the whole problem - he's just too calm.

Dani and Charlie exchange a look, their sense of discomfort rising. They've no idea what they'll be looking at when they step off this plane but it's not like they've got much choice at this point. He takes her hand and squeezes it for a second, grounding them both before they both pull their guns and follow Rayborn off of the plane.

He turns and stops walking when they're both off of the steps and on the tarmac, one hand tucked inside his jacket.

"I'm afraid I won't be able to go back to California with you." He tells them, and his gaze turns on Dani - he actually looks a little sad. "I really wish you'd left this alone, Dani. I didn't want things to end this way."

After that, everything happens so fast it's a struggle to piece it back together until much, much later.

All Dani remembers after the bullet slams into her chest is watching Charlie's eyes go feral, firing her weapon, and hearing the sound of at least four gunshots echo through the early morning light before she falls to the ground.


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ****JUST IN CASE YOU MISSED IT, THIS IS THE SECOND UPDATE I'VE POSTED TODAY, BOTH WITHIN ABOUT 5 MINUTES OF EACH OTHER :)****

"Crews." He answers the phone - her phone - the same way he always does, even though this time it takes him a second to remember how to use his voice.

"Uh, I'm looking for a 'Dani Crews'?" A voice Charlie doesn't recognise tells him, and for a second his voice sticks in his throat.

"Dani Crews?" He parrots back to her in sharp confusion, blinking rapidly, "I'm sorry, who is this?"

"This is Officer Phelps from the California State Prison, I'm calling about an inmate - Peter Jackson." Phelps says, and Charlie lets his head fall back against the whitewashed concrete wall of the hospital waiting room behind him, figuring there's only one way to find out what she's calling about.

"This is her- her husband. Can I take a message?" His throat feels like it's closing up because all of a sudden, all he can think is;  _now you might never be_.

"Our records show that your wife visited Mr. Jackson yesterday afternoon." Phelps says, with that almost robotic sounding guard voice that he hates hates hates.

_You were lucky, Crews. The cut isn't that deep._

_Only three broken bones this time - that's a pretty big improvement on the last time you were here._

_You were only out for four days - you should be back in general population in a week or so - guess you must be getting used to prison life, huh?_

"That's right." He replies monotonously, counting the posters on the wall opposite him, each advertising a more disgusting and horrifying medical condition than the last that _EVERYONE SHOULD BE CHECKING FOR OTHERWISE YOU'RE ALL GOING TO DIE BUT NO ONE PANIC OKAY?!_

"She said Jackson was a friend of her fathers." The woman phrases it like a question. Like she doesn't believe what she's saying.

"That's right." He repeats. Switches to counting the cracks in the wall.

"And he also called her from a contraband cell phone he had stashed in his cell late last night."

"He did." Charlie agrees. Counts the seventeenth crack twice. Starts over.

"Do you have any idea what they talked about?" She asks, and he silently answers  _Yes. He blew up her whole life._

"Just catching up, I think." He tells her.  _There's thirty seven cracks in the plaster on that wall. How interesting._ _ **So**_ _interesting. Dani could be dying_.

"Mr. Crews, is your wife particularly close to Mr. Jackson?" Phelps asks, and there's some kind of edge in her voice that makes Charlie trust her even less.

"No, she isn't." Charlie tells her, abandoning his counting and sitting up straighter. "Why?"

"Peter Jackson was stabbed while on his way to breakfast this morning. He's dead."

It's the same, all-the-bad-news-in-a-rush delivery that, as a homicide detective, he's fairly familiar with. He takes a deep breath then lets it out.

"Who was it?" He asks, already knowing she'll say that they don't know. That it happened in the blind spot of the CCTV system, or that there were just too many people around to get a clear view on what happened, or that they've got no murder weapon and the prisoners are refusing to talk. That's just how it goes on the inside.

"We don't know. It happened on the very edge of the cameras' line of sight and since all the prisoners were heading to the mess hall for breakfast, there's too many people in the corridor to see exactly what happened." She tells him, voice full of fake sympathy, like she thinks they were friends, and he leans back again, resting his head on the wall.

That's just how it goes on the inside.

* * *

He can't stop replaying it over in his head. All these gunshots and then the stillest kind of silence as Dani stumbles back and falls to the ground.

Each time he sees it in his head he tries to stop it, tries to force himself to think about something else but it's like the whole thing is stuck on permanent replay, tattooed inside his eyelids. She'd hit the tarmac and looked up at him with wide eyes as the shocking red stain spread outwards across her chest, and he'd found himself dropping to his knees at her side, white hot terror burning through his body as it occurs to him just how niave they really were about all this.

"Dani- No, no, no, look at me, Dani, don't go to sleep." He instructs, pressing down a little harder on the profusely bleeding wound in her chest.

"M'sorry, Charlie." She mumbles, her eyes half closed, her right hand settling over his, "s'too late."

"No it isn't," He insists as he tucks his free hand round the back of her neck and holds her head up, "You're going to be fine."

"Charlie-" She murmurs his name as her eyes slide shut again and he shakes her just a little. He wants desperately to reach for his blanket of Zen, but finds every thread he catches is already torn away from its seam, like his world is unraveling faster and faster as she fades in front of him.

"Please don't leave me," He begs, leaning down to kiss her cheeks, her forehead, her lips, "You're everything, you can't leave me, Dani, please."

He sees tears on her face and realises with a jolt that she's not the one crying - he is.

When the ambulance crew finally shows up, they initially head for Rayborn since he's closer to them.

"He's already dead," Charlie shouts desperately, not even knowing if that's true, "Help her!"

He honestly doesn't give a fuck if Rayborn is dead or not. He shot Dani in the chest - if he's not dead already, Charlie will kill him just as soon as he's conscious enough to appreciate the agony he wants to put him through.

* * *

"So do you guys need me to book plane tickets back from- hey, where are you anyway?" Ted asks, and Charlie finds himself equal parts glad that he called and wishing he hadn't.

"We're- Cancun. Mexico." He says, the words sticking in his throat, "He shot her. Rayborn shot Dani."

"What the hell happened?" Ted asks in shock, and Charlie's holding the phone so tight he hears the plastic creak under the strain.

"He told us what we needed to know so we followed him off of the plane and he tried to ambush us - Rayborn, the pilot and the guy waiting for him who I guess was his driver all pulled guns on us." It feels like it's taking a great deal of concentrated effort to force himself to recall everything exactly as it happened.

"How are you not dead?" Ted asks, sounding horrified.

"I heard the pilot behind me, so I turned to look and he pulled a gun, then I don't- we were all firing at each other; I shot the pilot and then the driver shot at me when I turned around and I think I shot him and then…" he trails off aimlessly.

"Rayborn?" Ted asks, his voice steady but cautious.

"She got him before she went down." There's a twisted kind of pride in his voice. He's saved her life before, but his girl can fight her own battles.

"Jesus, Charlie." Ted mutters, "Is there anything we can do?"

"No, just- is Rachel okay?" He asks and there's a long pause that makes him feel a familiar sense of dull dread. "What happened?" He lets his eyes fall closed again.

"She overheard Olivia and I earlier while we were talking about Jack Reese." Ted says guiltily, and the small amount of accumulated trepidation dissipates.

"Does she know what happened?"

"In far too much detail. We really thought we were alone and so I was explaining some of the stuff that was going on to Liv - including how Reese died - and next thing we know Rachel appears in the doorway looking like she's been sucker punched."

"Where is she now?" Charlie asks, figuring he should probably talk to her and make sure she's doing okay.

"She and her boyfriend left pretty fast - I'm not sure where they went." Ted replies, sounding concerned, but Charlie isn't worried. He packed her off and sent her to Europe by herself for the better part of six months and she coped just fine. Rachel can take care of herself.

"Oh, you might need to call our lawyer." Charlie remembers, "We didn't exactly foresee international travel on the cards for tonight so we don't have visas or passports or anything. Plus, you know, the three people we shot."

"No problem." Ted replies.

"Uh, Detective Crews?" His eyes fly open to see a woman wearing blue scrubs standing in front of him. His whole chest tightens unbearably.

"I gotta go." He tells Ted, then hangs up without waiting for his reply.

He stands up and immediately asks, "How is she?"

"Miss. Reese is doing well, we're just bringing her around now. You can see her if you like." The woman has a warm Spanish accent that would probably be calming in almost any other situation - not this one though. They've walked into traps and been thwarted at every damn turn in this whole investigation, so he won't be satisfied until he can see her and hold her and  _know_  that she's okay.

"Of course," He replies immediately, "Lead the way."

She nods and gives him a sympathetic smile as she turns and leads him through a set of double doors, through a few corridors and some more doors, up a flight of stairs and then a little way down the hall and into Dani's room. There's a doctor and two nurses there, checking her vitals and observing her to make sure there's no complications as she wakes up.

She's mumbling half formed words as she starts to regain consciousness, forcing her eyes open to see where she is, and he can see the nurses becoming restless as Dani starts to panic at not knowing where she is or what's happening. He steps past one of them, who protests but Charlie ignores him and is at her side immediately, gently touching her arms and her face and trying to calm her down.

"It's okay. You're okay, just breathe, sweetheart, everything's fine." He works to keep his voice even and steady as he talks to her, like seeing her like this isn't one of the scariest things that's ever happened to him - which is saying a lot considering the path his life has taken.

"Charlie?" She mumbles his name and tries to open her eyes wider, to make sure this is really happening and not some anesthesia induced dream.

"I'm here," He tells her, brushing her hair back off her face as her movements slow and she starts to settle, "You're safe now."

* * *

When everything has calmed down a little, and the doctor has given the okay for Dani to be moved out of the ICU and into a private room, Charlie figures it's probably time they talked about the phone call. They also need to talk about Dani's solo trip to California State Prison and subsequent lie on the topic, but that's a discussion for another day - a day when she's not laid up in hospital.

He's sitting on the chair beside her bed, leaning in closely and holding her hand.

"I just got off the phone with a charming woman from CSP." He tells her, "She said to tell you that Peter Jackson was stabbed this morning."

"Is he dead?" Dani asks, her face deliberately blank and her voice even and steady. The way her fingers start to pick at a loose thread on the blue blanket spread over her tell a different story - she knows there's very few ways someone would have been persuaded to disclose a personal matter over the phone.

"Yep." Charlie confirms, "No murder weapon, no suspects, no leads."

She nods, just as unsurprised as he is.

Someone died - actually, a few someones have died recently, but part of him still feels like a little kid at Christmas-  _she's okay, she's fine, she's right here in front of you_.

Finally, after a settling of silence, he can't help it. "So, Mrs. Crews, is there anything you want to talk about?"

"Don't be smug," She grouches, still picking at the loose thread, "It's not a good look on you."

"I'm trying not to," He tells her honestly, wearing a grin that lights the room, "But I can't help it."

Dani hums disapprovingly, but nods with a knowing look. Then, as Charlie often does, he drops the smile from his face and his eyes drop down to looks at where their hands are joined atop the blankets.

"You flat lined in the ambulance on our way here." He tells her carefully, his voice quiet and controlled as he maps her hand with his fingers, "And I've never been that scared in all my life."

"Hey," She tells him, settling her free hand on his cheek to get him to look back at her, "I'm here now."

"You are." He agrees, and his smile is both weary and grateful. She can't help but smile back, before a somewhat troubling thought occurs to her.

"Charlie, where exactly  _is_  here?" She asks, her eyes flicking around the fairly stereotypical hospital room she now finds herself in, as if looking for something that might give her a hint.

"Here is an ever changing reality inhabited by both impermanent beings and equally impermanent objects, and is just as likely to be in one place as another." He rattles off without even having to stop and think about it.

"Yes, but geographically speaking, where are we?" She presses, no longer batting an eyelash at the Zen thing. She finds it's grown on her.

"I think you might actually enjoy this part." He says with a gleam in his eye. "Remember you once told me that if you had my- you know,  _means_ , you'd be on a beach somewhere?"

She nods appraisingly, prompting him to continue. "We're in Mexico." He tells her, "Cancun to be exact. George is really earning his retainer this month since he's currently trying to prove that we didn't  _intentionally_  enter the country illegally. Plus, you know, the whole thing with the three dead guys on the runway."

She doesn't think she'll ever get used to that - his cavalier attitude towards death. She supposes that being surrounded by it would cause one of two possible paths; either, like Charlie, you become fairly hardened to it, you find a way of separating yourself from it; or, like Dani, you become wary of it to the point of fear. Death becomes the monster in the closet, the sourceless shadow across the park in the night time.

"I'm sorry I lied to you." She says quietly when he doesn't look up from their hands. "I should have called you as soon as I figured out Jackson was something to do with all of this."

He looks up at her finally, wearing an expression she can't place - it's strange - somewhere between annoyed and apologetic. "We don't have to talk about this now if-"

"Yes, we do." Dani disagrees, knowing she's right.

He watches her hesitantly for a second before nodding his agreement. "Why did you do it then?" He asks and she sighs.

"Truthfully I'm not completely sure. I just- it was such a long shot. I didn't even have any kind of evidence to prove my half-formed theory and I didn't want to subject you to going back there if I was wrong." Dani replies slowly as she thinks it through.

"It wouldn't have been the first time I'd gone back, Dani." He points out, "Being a cop, it's sometimes in the job description."

"I know." She tells him immediately, "God, I know, it's ridiculous. I just." She cuts herself off and sighs. "I guess I was misguidedly trying... to protect you."

He smiles - now somewhere between apologetic and pleased. "That's  _my_  job." He tells her, knowing it'll get a rise out of her.

She doesn't disappoint. She narrows her eyes at him, "Because I'm such a damsel in distress I can't take care of myself at all." She agrees sarcastically, before realising that the expression on his face isn't apologetic at all - he's embarrassed. He's ashamed that she felt the need to take care of him.

"Crews." She complains, "We've been partners for two years. It's just as much my job to watch your back as it is yours to watch mine." Her voice is chiding as he settles comfortably in the conclusion that this non-argument is a simple one to solve. They're both wrong when it comes down to it - Dani shouldn't have lied to him and he shouldn't forget that just because they're together now, doesn't mean she can't still 'have his back' like she did when they were just partners at work. She's one of the few people in the world he would trust with his life, and that hasn't changed just because they've crossed certain lines - if anything, it's gotten stronger.

"I want to ask you something," He blurts, staring at their clasped hands, "But I feel like it's probably not something you want me to ask."

She raises her free hand and tilts his chin up so he's looking at her. She looks sure and steady when she says with a shrug (which is followed by a slight wince at her aching chest muscles), "Only one way to find out."

He looks down at her, preparing to steel his nerves, and finding he suddenly doesn't need to. He's sure about her - if she says she's not ready, or even if she says flat out 'no', that doesn't change the fact that they're in love, and living together, and he can't see a time when they won't be. None of that will change, no matter what her answer, and he honestly just wants to be with her for the rest of his life; rings and a piece of paper be damned.

He uses his free hand to smooth her hair back off of her face, then leans down to kiss her, with a slow sureness that has no less passion to it than other faster, more intense kisses they've shared.

He takes a deep breath, then lets it out slowly, a peaceful smile on his face as he looks down at the love of his life.

"Will you marry me?" He asks, and an immediate, unconscious smile spreads across her face, then something less than a laugh and more than a giggle bursts between her lips.

"Thank god you actually asked that," she tells him with a grin, "I was worried then that I'd read you wrong and you were just going to ask if we could get a cat or something."

"You're killing me over here," He says, whining just a little, "Is that a yes? It sounds like it might be a yes."

"Of course I'm saying yes, dumbass." She tells him, rolling her eyes and pulling him down for a kiss that isn't really a proper kiss on account of how neither one of them can stop smiling.

"This day just got so much better." He grins, brushing his hand through her hair, "You'll have to wait until we get home to see the ring though."

She can picture the kind of ring he's probably bought her - and what it probably cost him - and she narrows her eyes. He just smiles guilelessly and leans down to kiss her again.


End file.
